Sublime Physick: Essays - Paperback

by Patrick Madden (Author)

2016 Foreword Reviews Indies Award, Silver
2016 Association for Mormon Letters Award
2017 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold

This introspective and exuberant collection of Patrick Madden's essays is wide-ranging and wild, following bifurcating paths of thought to surprising connections. In Sublime Physick, Madden seeks what is common and ennobling among seemingly disparate, even divisive, subjects, ruminating on midlife, time, family, forgiveness, loss, originality, a Canadian rock band, and much more, discerning the ways in which the natural world (fisica) transcends and joins the realm of ideas (sublime) through the application of a meditative mind.

In twelve essays that straddle the classical and the contemporary, Madden transmutes the ruder world into a finer one, articulating with subtle humor and playfulness how science and experience abut and intersect with spirituality and everyday life.

Author Biography

Patrick Madden is a professor at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Disparates: Essays (Nebraska, 2020) and Quotidiana: Essays (Nebraska, 2014), and coeditor, with David Lazar, of After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays. His essays have appeared in a variety of periodicals as well as in The Best Creative Nonfiction and The Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. Visit Madden's website at quotidiana.org.