Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses

by Walter Garstang

Genres: Poetry, Science, Biology

104 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1985

Reviews

[ion · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If art is long, science is much longer”

[Nicole Finch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie: a lot of this went over my head. Even so, I found the poems most enjoyable. The book is aimed at serious students of biology, but the foreword and the introduction gave me enough background to appreciate the poems, even if I didn't understand everything completely. Every poem scanned perfectly, which is what makes them so good. I enjoyed reading some of them out loud, and figuring out how to pronounce the long scientific names by how they fit into the poem.

I heard about this book when I was reading THE BOOK OF EELS by Patrik Svenson. Since it's out of print, I got it via interlibrary loan at my public library. The poem about eels specifically lives up to the hype, and was the most interesting for me to read after finishing the Svenson book.

The front matter makes it clear that Garstang was proposing a revolutionary new understanding of evolution in these poems, in addition to his published scientific papers, but his contemporaries were likely to brush this off because of his whimsical poetry. When I was in high school, it was the fashion to do "projects" in every class, instead of writing papers, with a wide variety of acceptable formats. Almost every student made posters for their projects, but I, lacking even the most rudimentary skills in the visual arts, and having a greater-than-average desire for attention, almost always wrote and performed a song or a poem for my projects. I wrote songs about Avogadro's Number, pi, the chemical properties of chlorine, and even wrote a parody of Dante's Inferno commenting on the popular figures of the day. In short, I was (and still am) a huge nerd, and, for this reason, I really appreciate the effort Garstang put into both the scientific accuracy and the technical artistry of his poems.

I'd recommend this book to current students of biology, because they'd be able to appreciate it on a much deeper level than I can, and also because it might help them remember tricky facts when studying for exams.

[Luca Grifo-Hahn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not going to pretend like I understood everything the author talks about in this book, but this is easily one of the greatest intersections of art and science in the universe. Everyone should read, enjoy and learn from this book.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very very esoteric book. I got it from the library and I think I might be the only person who ever looked at it. It was published in 1951. Walter Garstang did a great job writing poetic verses about larva but you need to know the scientific terms and life cycles of these larva to appreciate his work. Section D in the back of the book is essentially a chapter about the larva and should be read first. I was able to appreciate a couple of the verses and I think anyone who actively works in the field of zoology will find these verses charming and fun.