Science by Emily Toder

by Emily Toder

"Playful and smart, Emily Toder's SCIENCE is written in a limpid vernacular of sudden lacunae, jumps, and about-faces. For all the poems' contemporaneity, they are haunted by an unsaid and probably indeterminate mystical experience." —Eugene Ostashevsky"Emily Toder's poems are empathetic, generous and open with an emotional intelligence that run laps around the world we are becoming in. She doesn’t demand or consume, she considers." — HTMLGIANT

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published November 1, 2012

About the author

Emily Toder is the author of the poetry collections Beachy Head and Science (from Coconut Books) and the chapbooks No Land (Brave Men), Brushes With (Tarpaulin Sky), and I Hear a Boat (Duets). She has translated various prose and poetry collections, among them The Life and Memoirs of Dr. Pi (Clockroot Books), Wendolin Kramer (Barcelona eBooks), and The Errant Astrologers (Ugly Duckling Presse). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews

[Jason Mashak · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not often blown away by the minds of young poets. By their raw and reckless use of language, maybe, but rarely by their mental processes, especially when overtly evident on the page. Miss Toder has beat the odds. Her thoughts are there on the page, strung out in poetic internal dialogues that kept me wondering if she doesn't speak in quirky metaphors and stanzas by nature. There's something polished about the poetry -- I mean it's got such a 'perfectness' to it that I found only a couple places in the whole book where I would have done something differently -- but the fact that it so faithfully follows an apparent 'Emily's epistemology' made sure that I couldn't be bored. I was, after all, LEARNING about this new-to-me universe, and everything in it seemed wonderful, even the heartaches.

[Mike Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

from NOÖ [14]:

Read this while waiting for toast in my apartment overlooking the radio station parking lot in Northampton. This is a book of poems, except it’s really a book of patient lectures on how to fix the lasagna you’re bringing to a friend’s dinner party so it doesn’t look like you already ate half of it, weeping, by yourself. Emily Toder’s poems do this thing where they walk a tightrope of plainspoken candor while wearing a headdress made of artificial feathers the colors and shapes of the geometry in 1980s New Wave videos. Toder’s poems will explain the world better than the world does, which is to say more frankly re: pain.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science is a walk through another dimension. The lines ring like when you walk through a hazy morning but the sun is fighting the particles for dominance. Maybe this is the grammar of what is.

“We all dangle somewhere, I cooed to it
It didn’t like me
Flurries came out of it
and it flurried for a long time
Weapons and rebates came out of it
An empty circle would have been better
I told it that and it smacked me”

I feel okay in this bizarre language world because everything is said plainly. Circles, hexagons, squares, etc. should all be floating or smacking me. Each line is a breath-hold, but oxygen is boring science anyway.

[C.J. Flood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book. Emily Toder's voice won't leave me alone, long after I finish reading her poems, and I don't want it to either. Full of heart and wonder, this collection shouldn't be missed by anyone with an interest in contemporary poetry.

[Nicholas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected more of this collection of poetry going in, and was disappointed for the first two sections. By the third, however, some gems appeared: the delightful "I Know Everything", entirely lines of half-sentences never completed, and the four Summertime poems.

From Summertime III: (about making pesto)
"Now they never make it
because they can make it
whenever they feel like it
and they never feel like it."

[Ronald Lett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simultaneously earthy and surreal, many of these feel like deeply insightful dialogues, even though there is only one side. Everything, the flows, lyrical color, etc., fits together perfectly.

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

this seemed promising; i was confused and disappointed