The Law of Truly Large Numbers: Poems

The Law of Truly Large Numbers is a book about coming to terms with loss and the arrival of unexpected, perhaps undeserved, love. Based on the statistical principle that in a truly large sample set anything outrageous is likely to happen, this book explores not only the outrageous things that have already happened--the loss of siblings and parents; the loss of home, friends, and relatives; the weight of illness and physical aging--but also the discovery and rediscovery of friendship as well as romantic and familial connections. Often locating themselves where mourning and celebration, grief and humor intersect, these poems consider the sometimes unexpected ways in which grief might open new channels for understanding and, ultimately, for love.

James Kimbrell is the author of Smote, The Gatehouse Heaven, and My Psychic and the cotranslator of Three Poets of Modern Korea: Yi Sang, Hahm Dong-Seon, and Choi Young-Mi. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Discovery/The Nation Prize, a Whiting Award, the John and Renee Grisham Fellowship, the Florida Book Award, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. A native of Mississippi, he now serves as distinguished research professor at Florida State University.