Where boys and girls trade places. Where the past can be turned inside out. Where men bend nature's laws and brace for war. Where beauty's curve is serpentine, and nothing can quench its heat. Where words bear the weight of stored light. Welcome to queer physics! The greatest pleasure of David Southward's adroit second book is the cordial sensibility and dazzling wit that distinguish these meditative lyrics. Southward has a gift for the tightly wrought image and carefully calibrated phrase, which he plays against the regularity of meter and rhyme in poems that celebrate trans friends, lament the "specter" of slavery in the Old South, extol tattoos acquired in middle age, memorialize COVID lockdowns, poke fun at New Age feel-good mantras, and essay the "estranged / and stranded" experience of growing up queer in southwest Florida. Queer Physics is among the most enjoyable poetry collections of the 2020s. -Brian Brodeur, author, Some Problems with Autobiography, winner, New Criterion Poetry PrizeIn Queer Physics, Southward is most at home exploring the influence of pop culture, the queerness of sexuality, and the quirks of human nature, but he soars when under the spell of wildlife and the natural world. "Party Killer," an ekphrastic piece about a photograph of an owl, is as captivating to readers as it is for the speaker. In the understated "Ferns," "curled hands stretch / to grace the air with form." And "Tree Swallows," a study of light and shadow (and how this planet makes of us all "idiots for beauty") is thrilling with its Wilburesque descriptions of "dragonfly neckties" and a "half-balletic, half-ballistic circus routine" rolling off the tongue and "skimming the surface of the afternoon." -Wendy Videlock, winner, Keats Soul-Making PrizeSouthward playfully and candidly transforms his experiences into the stuff of legend. In this collection, hyper-vivid memories from the '70s and '80s comfortably rub shoulders with classical myth. An accomplished artist in his own right, Southward lays out his poignant aesthetic in poems that summon up the likes of Picasso and Gertrude Stein. Queer Physics is more than a book - it is a heightened way of looking at the world. -Aaron Poochigian, author, American Divine
