Science and Other Poems

Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets

by Alison Hawthorne Deming

“I greatly admire Alison Deming’s lucid and precise language, her stunning metaphors, her passion, her wild and generous spirit, her humor, her formal cunning. I am taken, as all readers will be, by the knowledge she displays and how she puts this knowledge to a poetic use; but I am equally taken―I am more taken―by the wisdom that lies behind the knowledge. I am amazed, and delighted, by her authority and tenacity. She is of this world; she lives in it, and for better or worse, it is the world she settles for; and she understands that, even if she must rage a little, and sometimes more than a little, she is one of its citizens. Like every original poet, she appears to have sprung full-blown―out of Zeus’ head I want to say―but Aphrodite is here as well as Athena, the ocean as well as the mountain. I congratulate her on this fine book.”―Gerald Stern


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 spacious grace from the decade and reveals it as it was for those who lived


. . . bombs spread like bacteria on culture plates,


when the cost of a family staying together might


be Stelanize 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 “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.”

Genres: Poetry, Science

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1994

About the author

Poet and writer Alison Hawthorne Deming was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1946. She earned an MFA from Vermont College and worked on public and women’s health issues for many years. A descendant of the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, Deming is native to New England, but has studied and taught in many other regions as an instructor and guest lecturer. Her books of poetry include Science and Other Poems (1994), winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Praising the volume, judge Gerald Stern wrote: “I greatly admire Alison Deming’s lucid and precise language, her stunning metaphors, her passion, her wild and generous spirit, her humor, her formal cunning. I am taken, as all readers will be, by the knowledge she displays and how she puts this knowledge to a poetic use; but I am equally taken—I am more taken—by the wisdom that lies behind the knowledge.” The collection, described by Deborah DeNicola in the Boston Book Review as “a dense, majestic, wise and ambitious book,” is listed among the Washingon Post’s Favorite Books of 1994 and the Bloomsbury Review’s best recent poetry.

Deming’s other poetry collections include The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence (1997), Genius Loci (2005), and Rope (2009). Genius Loci was praised by D.H. Tracy in Poetry: “Alison Deming’s title means ‘spirit of place,’ but be warned . . . Deming doesn’t belong, or want to belong, to a single place long enough to find its genius, and so she functions more like a naturalist of naturalism, classifying the spirits of place as she encounters them.”

In addition to numerous journal and anthology publications, Deming has published works of nonfiction, including Temporary Homelands (1994), a collection of essays, The Edges of the Civilized World (1998), and Writing the Sacred into the Real (2001). She also edited Poetry of the American West: A Columbia Anthology (1996), and co-edited, with Lauret E. Savoy, The Colors of Nature: Essays on Culture, Identity, and the Natural World (2002; second edition 2011).

Deming is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts. She has received the Pablo Neruda Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Gertrude B. Claytor Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona and lives in Tucson.

Reviews

[Janée Baugher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection was chosen by the acclaimed Gerald Stern for the celebrated Walt Whitman award. Very dense poems, none of which were seemingly influence by human physiology (which is what this reader was hoping). Narrative/personal poems with subtle references to nature and the environment. Some persona poems. The title is really a misnomer, for "Science" is the name of the first poems, but really the other poems aren't driven by the sciences (no research-based pieces nor pieces with scientific nomenclature). This brings to mind, what constitutes a science-poem? Such a dull title for such a celebrated collection.

[Nicola · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed Deming's juxtapositions: the masterful way she weaves science and emotion, often to comic effect. These poems feel very genuine and lived; many experiences taken directly from her life; some lifted from her dreams; all informed by her extensive knowledge.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Then it was the future, though what's arrived/ isn't what we had in mind... Some very enjoyable poetry on science and nature themes.

[Stephanie Kesler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first works of a young poet (33 years ago). And the last section of poems makes the whole collection - the potential really begins to show.