"Here are poems quietly wise, beautiful, beguiling, and enriched by the peculiarities and spectacularities of science. Guiding them is a poet tough-skinned by tenderhearted. In giving accounts of a wide array of ALIVE-in-our-world, Lynn Pedersen's poems shimmer. And among the multitudes of creatures, wwe find grief to be but another animal "that can depart and return with a soft shudder of feathers." These are poems to save and/or devour."
Includes bibliographical references (pages 77-78).
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Contents
Catalog I. The infinite density of grief -- The birth of superstition -- Nomenclature: the first day -- Miscarriage -- Eve paints the apple trees -- The sterility of numbers -- How to speak nineteenth century -- A catalog of what we're not meant to see -- The rift -- Isaac Newton waits out the plague -- Wilson's warbler -- The Mier Expedition: The Drawing of the Black Bean by Federic Remington (1896) -- How to move away -- Something about Darwin ; Catalog II. Begin -- After seven months, Alaskans begin to bury their dead -- A brief history of the passenger pigeon -- Pre-Op -- Taxonomy:taxidermy -- Correction -- Platypus:Hoax -- Decay -- Found poem: Sir Hamon L'Estrange gives the only documented account of a living dodo in Britain, 1638 -- What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain -- Pond -- Hangman -- I hate Darwin -- Horse latitudes -- Grief and geometry -- Primer -- What is still, what is moving ; Catalog III. The classification of impermanence -- The second son -- Braids -- Ballast -- Stil life -- My grandmother peels apples for sauce -- Why we speak English -- The quick of things -- Selling skies at the Soho Bazaar, 1790 -- At forty -- Darwin's twin sister -- Sugar in space -- On reading about the illness and death of Darwin's daughter Annie -- A way with words -- Dickinsonia.