Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Alison Hawthorne Deming brings to her first collection of verse the kinds of scrupulous observation and clear-eyed analysis that characterize scientific inquiry as well as a poet's eye for the telling moment. Science and Other Poems establishes astonishing parallels between the mute, inexorable processes of the physical universe and the dark mysteries of the human heart, parallels so clearly wrought and convincing that we wonder why we had not recognized them before.
"Caffe Trieste" lays bare the unexamined terror and sorrow that underlie the proliferation of faux fifties kitsch, then strips the veil of specious grace from the decade and reveals it as it was for those who lived it:. ...bombs spread like bacteria on culture plates, / when the cost of a family staying together might be Stelazine and / high-voltage erasures. They're just American - / all shine and no pain.
In the chilling "Alliance, Ohio," a mother and daughter suddenly find themselves stranded in a world of predators, a poisonous world charged with sexual threat, where every smile, every gesture, drips with sly menace.
Yet moments of dislocation can also be cause for rejoicing, as when a speaker, after surprising a bat in the house, is moved to rapture by the sight of the night sky. Every page of Science and Other Poems is alive with startling juxtapositions, eerie parallels, abrupt shifts of tone, and image after image of crystalline perfection - as in this dazzling evocation of soft-shelled crabs: "their finely stippled bodies that give to the touch, / translucent as Japanese lanterns.".
These poems imbue everything, from the microscopic to the stellar, with wonder. Each instant of illumination, like poetry itself, brings the world alive with "a faithfulness deeper than seeing."
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Subjects
Poetry (poetic works by one author)Showing 1 featured edition. View all 1 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1 |
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Winner of the Walt Whitman Award for 1993 given by the Academy of American Poets.
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?July 25, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
August 14, 2020 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
April 28, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the work. |
February 1, 2010 | Edited by WorkBot | add more information to works |
December 9, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |