Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science

by Alice Major

Poet Alice Major was given a book on relativity at the impressionable age of ten, so she never quite understood why science came to be dismissed as reductive or opposite to art. She surveys the sciences of the past half-century ― from physical to cognitive to evolutionary ― to shed light on why and how human beings create poems, challenging some of the mantras of postmodern thought in the process. Part memoir, part ars poetica, part wonder-journey, Intersecting Sets is a wide-ranging and insightful amalgam.

Genres: Poetry

296 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2011

About the author

Alice Major is a Canadian poet, who served as poet laureate of Edmonton, Alberta. During her tenure as poet laureate, she founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2006. She continues to serve on the Board of Directors for the Edmonton Poetry Festival Society as President.

Major emigrated from Scotland with her sister at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto, Ontario before working as a weekly newspaper reporter in central British Columbia. She has lived in Edmonton, Alberta since 1981. She has a BA (English, history) from Trinity College, University of Toronto, and works as a freelance writer specializing in utility issues.

She is past president of the Writers Guild of Alberta, and the League of Canadian Poets. She has published six collections of poetry. Her poetry has always been influenced by her interest in science and she has published a collection of essays, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science.

Reviews

[Sheelagh Caygill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an engaging book book of essays! If you are either an armchair scientst or professional scientist and appreciate poetry, read it. If you are a poet or a reader of poetry and are curious about science, read it. The poet works with words in the way a scientist might deal with cells or atoms. Metaphores are used by the poet and the scientist. I not only enjoyed this book, it really had me thinking and revved up my curiosity, too. What more can one one ask for from a writer?

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very satisfying -- literary and poetic in style, it also had a high level of "scienticity", as Major develops her themes in various areas of biology, linguistics, physics and more.

I found this book enjoyable and thoughtful. The references to scientific studies and concepts had me making notes about things to look up and learn more about. The references to creating poetry had me thinking more deeply about the collections of new poetry I've been perusing lately. And the way in which Major concludes that poets and scientists must both develop “the ability to simultaneously maintain conviction and doubt” seemed to me a description of the educated mind in general. She finishes by suggesting that the separation of poetry and science is facile, that rather than being emotion vs. rationality, both areas are full of emotion. It's an element of human life that can't fail to colour everything we do, whether we acknowledge or deny it.

Full review at The Indextrious Reader