Science and Other Poems

Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets

by Alison Hawthorne Deming

Winner of the 1993 Walt Whitman Award, given annually by the Academy of American Poets to a first collection of poetry. The final judge for the 1993 competition was Gerald Stern. Paper edition (unseen) $9.95. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Poetry, Science

96 pages, Hardcover

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.