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Notes of an Alchemist
Book by Eiseley, Loren C.
- GenresPoetryNonfictionNature
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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204 people want to read
About the author
Loren Eiseley
50 books311 followersLoren Corey Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was a highly respected anthropologist, science writer, ecologist, and poet. He published books of essays, biography, and general science in the 1950s through the 1970s.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 29, 2011
I wish I could rate this collection higher but in all honesty, I am struggling justifying a 3 star rating.
I had heard of Eiseley before deciding to pick this up. I had passed this book upon the library shelves one too many times. I think I should have snagged some other type of collection and tested something else by Eiseley, such as any of his essays.
These poems are nice. That's about it. There are breaths here and there of beauty and awe, but nothing that blew my socks off. Eiseley's profound respect and love of the natural sciences is the heart of these poems. I understood this quickly and thereafter felt bogged down by the same messages. I wanted something penetrating and subtle but I never quite felt any such thing.
I did enjoy reading some of the poems aloud to my 6-year-old. He particularly enjoyed The Snow Leopard. Maybe this has influenced my feelings more than anything else. Most of the poems were safe to read to my kids, which made me think I was not reading anything too mature. Eiseley did mention at the beginning that these poems were mostly the equivalent to doodles in a textbook, so I was warned and am not upset about the lack of maturity or depth.
I had heard of Eiseley before deciding to pick this up. I had passed this book upon the library shelves one too many times. I think I should have snagged some other type of collection and tested something else by Eiseley, such as any of his essays.
These poems are nice. That's about it. There are breaths here and there of beauty and awe, but nothing that blew my socks off. Eiseley's profound respect and love of the natural sciences is the heart of these poems. I understood this quickly and thereafter felt bogged down by the same messages. I wanted something penetrating and subtle but I never quite felt any such thing.
I did enjoy reading some of the poems aloud to my 6-year-old. He particularly enjoyed The Snow Leopard. Maybe this has influenced my feelings more than anything else. Most of the poems were safe to read to my kids, which made me think I was not reading anything too mature. Eiseley did mention at the beginning that these poems were mostly the equivalent to doodles in a textbook, so I was warned and am not upset about the lack of maturity or depth.
July 28, 2016
By all rights, I should give this two stars, but I cannot manage to muster the vitriol that rating would imply for this sweet (if slightly insipid) collection of exceptionally mediocre poems.
Loren Eiseley was an anthropologist and science author who taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and in his Preface to this collection, he says "I occasionally jotted a poem amidst the pages because, like a trade rat, I was making some kind of obscure interchange within my mind--keeping the ledger balanced as it were." As such, I was expecting no glorious polish on these poems, and I decidedly did not receive it. I was actually met with much less linguistic excitement than I was hoping for. There were a few poems that were enjoyable, but most inspired neither particular dislike nor particular interest--I actually forgot a few times whether I had already read a piece after putting the book down to use the restroom or get a drink of water or the like. I did enjoy "The Face of the Lion" and "The Sandburs Say No" and found "From Us Without Singing" to be interesting, if not particularly special.
Thematically, Eiseley has a slight Transcendentalist bent--sometimes declaring he would rather the company of animals to that of humans, or actively divorcing himself from humanity in favor of plants or other animals. I happen to dislike the Transcendentalists of American Romanticism fairly strongly, so this was not appreciated and served to make the book less engaging. It was not pronounced enough to ruin the experience or make me terribly frustrated with Eiseley, the way I sometimes have been with readings from Thoreau and Emerson, but it certainly did not improve my reading experience. My three favorite poems, I think actually avoided this--certainly "The Face of the Lion", about comfort, abuse, death, and healing maintained its decidedly human engagement. And "The Sandburs Say No" is essentially a paean to perseverance. "From Us Without Singing" is unusual in its vehement rejection of death, and exalts consciousness--both of human and non-human beings--in a desperate plea to let consciousness not be simply reabsorbed into the fabric of existence after death.
In my experience, this was a singularly unremarkable collection of poems, but someone with a closer position to the bulk of Eiseley's readable, but somewhat unmusical verse, might enjoy it much more.
Loren Eiseley was an anthropologist and science author who taught at the University of Pennsylvania, and in his Preface to this collection, he says "I occasionally jotted a poem amidst the pages because, like a trade rat, I was making some kind of obscure interchange within my mind--keeping the ledger balanced as it were." As such, I was expecting no glorious polish on these poems, and I decidedly did not receive it. I was actually met with much less linguistic excitement than I was hoping for. There were a few poems that were enjoyable, but most inspired neither particular dislike nor particular interest--I actually forgot a few times whether I had already read a piece after putting the book down to use the restroom or get a drink of water or the like. I did enjoy "The Face of the Lion" and "The Sandburs Say No" and found "From Us Without Singing" to be interesting, if not particularly special.
Thematically, Eiseley has a slight Transcendentalist bent--sometimes declaring he would rather the company of animals to that of humans, or actively divorcing himself from humanity in favor of plants or other animals. I happen to dislike the Transcendentalists of American Romanticism fairly strongly, so this was not appreciated and served to make the book less engaging. It was not pronounced enough to ruin the experience or make me terribly frustrated with Eiseley, the way I sometimes have been with readings from Thoreau and Emerson, but it certainly did not improve my reading experience. My three favorite poems, I think actually avoided this--certainly "The Face of the Lion", about comfort, abuse, death, and healing maintained its decidedly human engagement. And "The Sandburs Say No" is essentially a paean to perseverance. "From Us Without Singing" is unusual in its vehement rejection of death, and exalts consciousness--both of human and non-human beings--in a desperate plea to let consciousness not be simply reabsorbed into the fabric of existence after death.
In my experience, this was a singularly unremarkable collection of poems, but someone with a closer position to the bulk of Eiseley's readable, but somewhat unmusical verse, might enjoy it much more.
April 30, 2012
It is unfortunate that Loren Eiseley seems to have largely faded from the public eye (in the circles I inhabit, anyway, to my lasting chagrin), doubly unfortunate that so much of his work is out of print or difficult to find these days. He was a thoughtful, engaging and deep writer whose musings on life, death, Life, and Death, I feel still hide buried treasures for the inquisitive reader. Though fairly wide of Eiseley's usual mark of essays on scientific and emotional topics, this slim volume of poems nonetheless bears a family resemblance. Eiseley was a man thoroughly in love with nature and the world around him. Thoughtful, sweet, sometimes deeply melancholy, his poems seem to float softly down from some rarefied height, a height above the treeline, where the air is biting but clear, and land quietly and unassumingly on these pages. Some betray their creator's scientific background with arcane vocabulary or the occasional bit of less-than-graceful wordplay, but these blemishes hardly ruin the entire fruit. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this volume and feel it deserves a place on the shelves of anyone interested in the confluence and convergence of the natural sciences and the humanistic arts.
February 21, 2019
I picked up this book at a library sale. I love when I discover a new writer, a new voice. Loren Eiseley, like all writers, has a unique voice. Many of the poems are nature based. He has his own style too. My favorite poem is "The Face of the Lion". It is a poem about a stuffed lion, of a child's need for it, but also the life the adult shares with the stuffed lion.
July 18, 2023
This little book was an earth-shattering read for me. I took my time, absorbing a little every day, which I highly recommend to the next reader. Eiseley’s poems deserve that kind of respect because there is so much that can be revealed when you just sit with his thoughts awhile. This work borders on the mystical.
February 9, 2025
I have greatly enjoyed Eiseley's essays on time, geology, and life. I enjoyed most of these poems not so much as poetry, but as miniature versions of such essays. The most effective, at least to me, are those like The Stone Axe that give the reader a sudden, strange sense of time opening up beneath the reader's feet, offering a momentary glimpse into the long, otherwise-hidden flow of moments and events and lives that lie behind us and beneath us in the strata that we so casually stride, or drive, or fly across.
January 4, 2018
A deeply subjective perception of the natural realities that shape this work into a work of poetic naturalism, that awaken the spiritual and opens the mind. It is a rich ontology of fundamental categories of animals ,philosophies, and the universe in which he reveals an essential role in the deepest most comprehensive notes of an alchemist's soul.
November 4, 2020
3 1/2 stars. The poem "Not Time Calendrical" is excellent (4 1/2 stars).
October 2, 2021
Lovely poems mixing natural and archaeological imagery to offer keen observations of human and religious nature.
September 13, 2014
The beginning of the poem "The Striders" gives the feel of Eiseley's poetry:
The water striders row on a film of water
that can be broken by a beetle
who knows the secret of dissolving
the tension of the film.
Such chemistries reside
in the night darkness of the molecule
that seems to think.
Uncanny things
hide in the water,
slide secretly
even into the living blood of man.
His metaphors begin with observations about nature. These must be acknowledged by readers, at least in an oblique or casual way. Taking up this challenge means, as this poem says at its close:
". . .knowing how suddenly a world can fall."
I've owned this book since I received it as a gift in 1974 (when Eiseley was still alive).
The water striders row on a film of water
that can be broken by a beetle
who knows the secret of dissolving
the tension of the film.
Such chemistries reside
in the night darkness of the molecule
that seems to think.
Uncanny things
hide in the water,
slide secretly
even into the living blood of man.
His metaphors begin with observations about nature. These must be acknowledged by readers, at least in an oblique or casual way. Taking up this challenge means, as this poem says at its close:
". . .knowing how suddenly a world can fall."
I've owned this book since I received it as a gift in 1974 (when Eiseley was still alive).
December 2, 2009
A wonderful poem inside about an old college mowing horse that disappears.
Poems about the formation of crystals, butterfly diet, the Oregon Trail, and other things, and always about how the thoughts of man compare to and float through nature.
Poems about the formation of crystals, butterfly diet, the Oregon Trail, and other things, and always about how the thoughts of man compare to and float through nature.
September 5, 2010
I still like Eiseley's essays much better than his poetry but this was a pretty good collection. I give it four stars because there were several images or thoughts that he captured here that led directly to ideas for stories and poems of my own.
October 15, 2015
I tried. I just couldn't read these poems. I prefer his prose, even if it is a bit lush and dense at times.
April 12, 2017
It may not seem very impressive at first but the deeper I got into it, the more I saw and heard of what he saw and heard, and maybe even felt. Grateful to have found this.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews