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Praise for Affection for the Unknowable:
“I wish I owned several Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry so I could give them
to deserving poets. I would make an award to Len Anderson whose intelligent
heart makes a clear space in our brains, so we can find room for more imagination.
Maybe this is what physicists do, or should do. And he is, after all a physicist
as well as a poet. When I read this book, my thoughts have more imagination then
ever before and I feel that the world is fair indeed to give us, on a gray day
like this, the work of Len Anderson.”
—Grace Cavalieri, author of 13 books of poetry and 18 produced plays
and host of the radio show “The Poet and the Poem” from the Library of Congress.
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“Len Anderson’s Affection for the Unknowable might have
included a subtitle: News from the Universe, for the poems in this book explore
not only the personal world of the poet, but also the world of Quantum Theory
and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty, the world of physics and philosophy, ghazals of
dark matter and the duende of Flamenco, the spectral lines of hydrogen and our
kinship with a redwood tree. Len Anderson’s poems manage this universe
with clarity, candor, wit, compassion, and intelligence. This is a book
of wonder and marvels. Len Anderson is a poet whose work bridges the
Twentieth Century and the New Millennium.”
—Joseph Stroud, author of Below Cold Mountain.
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“Affection for the Unknowable draws particular strength
from its reverential exploration of a life alternately informed by a somber and
trenchant perspective and an infectious jouissance.
In reading this collection, there were extraordinary moments when I felt
simultaneously humbled, awed and terrified, yet ultimately restored by the
wisdom and vibrancy inherent in Anderson’s world-view. His poetic voice is
always a breath, a heartbeat, or a self-deprecating stumble away from the
numinous. His book is an astonishing gift to us all.”
—Calder Lowe, Executive Editor of The Montserrat Review
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Read a
review
by Chris Watson in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
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Read Joan Zimmerman’s
weblog review.
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Len Anderson was born and raised on the San Francisco Peninsula and
received his BA and PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley.
As a physicist he worked in experimental elementary particle physics at Berkeley
and in Europe; in private industry he developed sensors for the automation of
paper manufacturing. His poetry has appeared in Bellowing Ark, The Dallas Review, DMQ Review,
The Montserrat Review, Quarry West, The Sand Hill Review and Sarasota Review of Poetry.
He is a winner of the Dragonfly Press Poetry
Competition and the Mary Lonnberg Smith Poetry Award. He and his wife
live in Santa Cruz County, California. He is a co-founder of Poetry Santa Cruz.
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Affection for the Unknowable by Len Anderson. Released October, 2003.
104 pages, paperback, $12, ISBN 0-9716373-5-0
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Poems by
Len Anderson
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