THE IMPOSSIBLE PHYSICS OF THE HUMMINGBIRD

Praise for THE IMPOSSIBLE PHYSICS OF THE HUMMINGBIRD

Kim Farrar writes, in one poem, of wanting to keep sorrow out of it.  A natural impulse, of course, but not a helpful one in poetry.  So the sorrow stays in, but by some strange alchemy, that same sorrow clears a path so joy may also enter.  At the heart of this book are the deaths of a beloved brother and mother, as well as the struggles of an autistic daughter.  But the understory is love, and that such losses are the paths love takes to find us.  The poems are sometimes harrowing, but there are moments of grace interspersed throughout. This is especially true in several poems at the end of the book that are responding to a cancer diagnosis. Kim Farrar has a ferocious devotion to the need for imaginative responses to subjects that are challenging, but that are at the heart of what it means to be human. I am bewitched by this book; the way almost every poem in it has a moment, or several moments, that make me want to linger and be grateful that such poetry exists. 

—Jim Moore

Farrar treats the loss of a brother and father, the decline of a mother, a daughter’s autism, and undergoing cancer treatment with an inspiring level of acceptance, and familial and communal connection. These poems shine with appreciation and gratitude for loved ones and nature, a fine dry sense of humor, and a calm survivor’s optimism: “we can jig/through millennia/swagger among/monsoons/moonwalk/while empires/crumble,” leaving this reader with a renewed sense of how to grieve, live and love well.

—April Ossmann (author of We)

About KIM FARRAR

Kim Farrar is a writer and collage artist.  Her full-length poetry collection, The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2025. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Familiar and The Brief Clear, both published by Finishing Line Press.  Her poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Salamander, Rhino, New Ohio Review and other literary journals.  Her essays have been published in Illness & Grace, Voices of Autism, and Reflections. Her manuscripts, The Impossible Physics of the Hummingbird and Calamities of the Natural World, were semi-finalists in Grayson's poetry contests in 2022 and 2021 respectively.  Orbits and Bonds, a chapbook of poems and collages, was a semi-finalist in the New Women's Voices contest by Finishing Line Press in 2022.  In 2020 her poem "Powerful Forces" received an honorable mention in the Gemini Poetry Contest.  She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.  Her work can be found on her website at poetrysite.blog