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All the Spectral Fractures: New and Selected Poems
Poetry. Women's Studies. The microbiologist Mary A. Hood has been acclaimed for poetry and essays that combine a scientist's expertise with a gift for lyrical descriptions of the natural world. ALL THE SPECTRAL FRACTURES: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS offers a compilation of Hood's three published poetry collections and other poems, drawing on decades of fieldwork as well as her commitment to feminism and environmentalism.
Hood approaches her varied subject matter--swamps and forests, small-town life, high-stakes science--with bracing honesty, wit, and compassion. Her poems offer meditations on the interconnections between humans, plants, and animals ("we of the self-replicating molecules"), and portraits of ordinary people "trying to keep it together / without the glue of ego, uncertain a unified theory / resolves chaos, wondering if we must break / to be whole."
"Bridging the scientific with the lyric, while also spanning history, the seasons, the globe, and a rich multitude of voices... her lines sparkle with 'the glorious immediacy, ' even while speaking out against social injustices and the injuries inflicted on the earth."--Jill McCabe Johnson
"ALL THE SPECTRAL FRACTURES: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS shades from Sherwood Anderson to Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop to Loren Eiseley in its attention to human community, creatures and objects, and the unknown mysteries of existence, loss, and death."--Laura-Gray Street
"Mary A. Hood's poems are often like short stories in miniature... Hood seems to be the odd microbiologist who is willing to sit down for a cup of coffee with almost anyone, and elicit a story, an illumination, and a poem."--Emily Grosholz
Hood approaches her varied subject matter--swamps and forests, small-town life, high-stakes science--with bracing honesty, wit, and compassion. Her poems offer meditations on the interconnections between humans, plants, and animals ("we of the self-replicating molecules"), and portraits of ordinary people "trying to keep it together / without the glue of ego, uncertain a unified theory / resolves chaos, wondering if we must break / to be whole."
"Bridging the scientific with the lyric, while also spanning history, the seasons, the globe, and a rich multitude of voices... her lines sparkle with 'the glorious immediacy, ' even while speaking out against social injustices and the injuries inflicted on the earth."--Jill McCabe Johnson
"ALL THE SPECTRAL FRACTURES: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS shades from Sherwood Anderson to Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop to Loren Eiseley in its attention to human community, creatures and objects, and the unknown mysteries of existence, loss, and death."--Laura-Gray Street
"Mary A. Hood's poems are often like short stories in miniature... Hood seems to be the odd microbiologist who is willing to sit down for a cup of coffee with almost anyone, and elicit a story, an illumination, and a poem."--Emily Grosholz
254 pages, Paperback
Published November 9, 2017
229 people want to read
About the author
Mary A. Hood
4 books2 followersMary A. Hood is professor emerita at the University of West Florida. In addition to her books, she has published general articles on conservation and the environment, and numerous scientific articles in the field of microbial ecology.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 22, 2017
(Nearly 4.5) There is so much meat and variety to this poetry collection spanning the whole of Mary A. Hood’s career. A professor emerita of microbiology at the University of West Florida and a former poet laureate of Pensacola, Florida, Hood takes inspiration from the ordinary folk of the state, the world of academic scientists, flora and fauna, and the minutiae of everyday life.
The earliest poems take on the voices and perspectives of country women. One of my favorites was “The Wisteria Bar”:
Twelve hours on my feet nights
I stop for a drink to shake cold
January’s breath.
Purple clusters on the sign
above the door welcome those of us
still seeking comfort in containers.
From these Florida poems I also especially liked “Spring,” “Late Freeze” and “To an Armadillo.”
The nature imagery and alliteration are strong throughout the book (as in “Among the phragmites dusted with frost / pelicans preen on sandbars or float like buoys” from “A Fish Story”), and HeLa cells and the double helix are used as metaphors of immortality and marriage, respectively. Hood is also wise on the topic of mothers and daughters: how mothers can get absorbed into their children’s lives; how daughters end up resembling their mothers.
Poetry-loving scientists—of whom I certainly hope there are many—won’t be able to resist the “Songs of the Laboratory” sequence, while its coda, “Threnody,” playfully refutes the idea that science is all about facts: “Do not bring your heart here. / This is a place of numbers, a place of machines.”
Other favorites included “The Lesson of the Shirt” and “The Juxtaposition of Being.” The two final sections, “So as Not to Go Unremembered” and “Uncollected Poems,” are particularly memorable.
This is not a book to race through but one to savor a few poems at a time, moving backwards and forwards as the mood takes you. It would make an excellent bedside book for a poetry fan or someone who struggles with poetry but would like to read more of it.
The earliest poems take on the voices and perspectives of country women. One of my favorites was “The Wisteria Bar”:
Twelve hours on my feet nights
I stop for a drink to shake cold
January’s breath.
Purple clusters on the sign
above the door welcome those of us
still seeking comfort in containers.
From these Florida poems I also especially liked “Spring,” “Late Freeze” and “To an Armadillo.”
The nature imagery and alliteration are strong throughout the book (as in “Among the phragmites dusted with frost / pelicans preen on sandbars or float like buoys” from “A Fish Story”), and HeLa cells and the double helix are used as metaphors of immortality and marriage, respectively. Hood is also wise on the topic of mothers and daughters: how mothers can get absorbed into their children’s lives; how daughters end up resembling their mothers.
Poetry-loving scientists—of whom I certainly hope there are many—won’t be able to resist the “Songs of the Laboratory” sequence, while its coda, “Threnody,” playfully refutes the idea that science is all about facts: “Do not bring your heart here. / This is a place of numbers, a place of machines.”
Other favorites included “The Lesson of the Shirt” and “The Juxtaposition of Being.” The two final sections, “So as Not to Go Unremembered” and “Uncollected Poems,” are particularly memorable.
This is not a book to race through but one to savor a few poems at a time, moving backwards and forwards as the mood takes you. It would make an excellent bedside book for a poetry fan or someone who struggles with poetry but would like to read more of it.
October 1, 2017
This was my first exposure to Mary A. Hood's writing, and I'm thrilled to acknowledge that the book is quite the introduction to a writer who has written for many years. Combining collected with un, this book brings forward countless themes that allow the reader a very significant glimpse into the themes Hood holds dear: biology, ecology, and feminism.
June 24, 2025
All the Spectral Fractures is the first book by Mary A. Hood that I’ve read. I’m exceptionally glad that Rosalie Morales Kearns—a contributor to Arcana: the Tarot Poetry Anthology—asked me to review this collection of poetry. It covers many themes, such as racism in the south, sexism among scientists, fear’s relationship with love, the inspiring quality of song, magic in the mundane, the women whose voices often go unheard, and the natural world.
Hood’s work led me to contemplate how modern eco-poetry is a resurgence of the pastoral. For instance, her ‘Calendar’ section could be a reinterpretation of Spenser’s classic pastoral Shepheardes Calendar. She follows in the footsteps of other nature-poets, such as Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Bishop (who are named in “Music for a Mild Day” and “Ice Fishing on Europa”). Frankly, as someone who has lived in the urbanity of Oakland for nearly a decade, I feel disconnected from the rural world that Oliver and Hood praise. Perhaps my greatest failure as a poet is not knowing enough names of plants.
However, I do share the sky with these women. The moon is our “common language,” as Hood says in “Question of the Moon.” In astrology, I have tried to learn a “language of the stars,” different but related to the star-song of Hood’s “Laboratory” poems. Quilted stars of “Aunt Oleda, Quilt-Maker” remind me of my mother, also a quilt-maker and my first astrology teacher.
And Hood's southern details—sweet tea, Spanish moss, the stunning “Beach” poem—reminded me to catch up with my southern dad and make plans to see him in Saint Augustine, Florida next year. All the Spectral Fractures transported me to childhood trips to see his parents in Sanford, Florida. Perhaps I can learn more plant names when I return to the south.
The lessons of animals are one way Hood inspires the reader to care about the environment. As a Leo and feline-lover, dead cats destroy my heart; her poem “Burying the Cat” reminded me of “May’s Lion” by Ursula Le Guin. Bats fly out of caves more than once in this collection. Butterfly-tattooed, I also deeply connected with the Herbert-like “Monarchs” shape poem where wings “fold and unfold the way hearts beat.”
All the Spectral Fractures builds bridges between scientists and writers. I got a “C” in high school chemistry and had to take remedial math to graduate from college, so STEM remains a distant world, filled with even more names I don’t know. However, the yearning to be published—“When I see my name in print / each letter of me curled and bent / I know, yes, yes, I do exist”—helps me understand the “Songs of the Scientists.” And Hood’s “Song of the Instruments” reminded me of Lem’s Cyberiad.
Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about the earth, anyone who wants to visit the south on the page, anyone who has loved and lost, and any common woman (in the Judy Grahn sense). I will definitely seek out more work by Mary A. Hood in the future.
Hood’s work led me to contemplate how modern eco-poetry is a resurgence of the pastoral. For instance, her ‘Calendar’ section could be a reinterpretation of Spenser’s classic pastoral Shepheardes Calendar. She follows in the footsteps of other nature-poets, such as Mary Oliver and Elizabeth Bishop (who are named in “Music for a Mild Day” and “Ice Fishing on Europa”). Frankly, as someone who has lived in the urbanity of Oakland for nearly a decade, I feel disconnected from the rural world that Oliver and Hood praise. Perhaps my greatest failure as a poet is not knowing enough names of plants.
However, I do share the sky with these women. The moon is our “common language,” as Hood says in “Question of the Moon.” In astrology, I have tried to learn a “language of the stars,” different but related to the star-song of Hood’s “Laboratory” poems. Quilted stars of “Aunt Oleda, Quilt-Maker” remind me of my mother, also a quilt-maker and my first astrology teacher.
And Hood's southern details—sweet tea, Spanish moss, the stunning “Beach” poem—reminded me to catch up with my southern dad and make plans to see him in Saint Augustine, Florida next year. All the Spectral Fractures transported me to childhood trips to see his parents in Sanford, Florida. Perhaps I can learn more plant names when I return to the south.
The lessons of animals are one way Hood inspires the reader to care about the environment. As a Leo and feline-lover, dead cats destroy my heart; her poem “Burying the Cat” reminded me of “May’s Lion” by Ursula Le Guin. Bats fly out of caves more than once in this collection. Butterfly-tattooed, I also deeply connected with the Herbert-like “Monarchs” shape poem where wings “fold and unfold the way hearts beat.”
All the Spectral Fractures builds bridges between scientists and writers. I got a “C” in high school chemistry and had to take remedial math to graduate from college, so STEM remains a distant world, filled with even more names I don’t know. However, the yearning to be published—“When I see my name in print / each letter of me curled and bent / I know, yes, yes, I do exist”—helps me understand the “Songs of the Scientists.” And Hood’s “Song of the Instruments” reminded me of Lem’s Cyberiad.
Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about the earth, anyone who wants to visit the south on the page, anyone who has loved and lost, and any common woman (in the Judy Grahn sense). I will definitely seek out more work by Mary A. Hood in the future.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews