The Feynman Challenge - by James Kevin Thornton (Paperback)

About the Book

The physicist Richard Feynman challenged poets to step aside from metaphor and capture the stark magnificence of the universe. Spurred to action, James Thornton opened himself to wonders and dived deep into the intricacies of science.

Book Synopsis

Poems about the universe: from the sub-atomic level to the cosmic, from bacteria to complex life and exoplanets.

The physicist Richard Feynman challenged poets to step aside from metaphor and capture the stark magnificence of the universe. Spurred to action, James Thornton opened himself to wonders and dived deep into the intricacies of science.

Let his poetry open your eyes.

Complete with an essay on Poetry and Science.

Review Quotes

"In this unusual and exceptionally interesting work, James Thornton speaks as both a poet who has colonized science and a scientist who speaks a poetic tongue." - Edward O. Wilson

"A brilliant introduction to the endless wonders of our universe, from quantum levels to the cosmos. It opened my eyes to many marvels and oddities." - Eberhard Fetz, Professor of Physiology, Biophysics, University of Washington

"Poets sometimes flinch at the idea of footnotes. Poems, they think, should be perfect small worlds of their own. The Feynman Challenge upends this aesthetic. Like the Pompidou Centre, it wears all its workings on the outside. Plunging into the sea of scientific knowledge, it comes up grinning and glittering with droplets of lovely information. This is a generous book, happy to serve the curiosity, the wonder and humility of science, happening here and there in words that simply send a shudder -Two black holes are about to marry, a billion years ago - through our sense of time and space." - Philip Gross, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize