Gravity Assist

by Martha Silano

Gravity Assist, the newest collection by Martha Silano, masterfully measures the heights and depths of our earthly visions. Cerebral yet meditative, capacious yet focused, this book soars with investigations and ruminations, love letters, origin stories, and notes on gravitational forces both literal and metaphorical. Through her usual nimble style, Silano deftly weaves the humanistic and the cosmic, delivering a series of up-close and personal examinations of phenomena as far flung as copepods, nebula, trilobites, preening cormorants, or “Reaching out to soothe you, /the twisted arms of the last of three species of endemic /sea stars ripping themselves apart, arms crawling away in opposite directions, insides spilling out.”

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2019

Reviews

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a huge Martha Silano fan, and I have been so lucky to feature her work twice in Superstition Review. In fact one of the poems in this collection appeared in Issue 12! So I am especially happy to be reading this collection. Some of my favorite moments:

Mother: The world
is so much better when you’re upside down.

Suddenly we had back-
talk, a word to describe that but Mahhhhhhhhhh whine.

Back then everyone was a unitarded, wheeling-and-dealing
paparazzo; it was all fab, no trade-offs, round-the-clock zazzy.

Jesus did /
did not ascend. (Daddy wasn’t sure.)

I’d venture to say rain or shine,
bring a shovel—the sharpest one you’ve got.

I blanket the yard with foxglove, Hot-Lips Salvia, little cigar.

My children: I bore thousands, each one named Incredulous.

[Michele Battiste · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am still dizzy from the heights and depths and light years I've traveled while reading this book. I've zipped from barleycorns to endoplasmic reticulum, zagged from Russian tortoises to lime Hi-Chews, following Martha's deliberate path making crazy meanings between things. I love the thing-ness of the poems, the concreteness of association that the poems demand and depend on. It's like a drive through museum of artifacts, each one emitting a signal, the signals becoming a code, the code becoming a book.

[Ace Boggess · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Gravity Assist, Martha Silano shows us everything that's possible in poetry. These are hardcore language poems that somehow never lose their accessibility. They touch on astronomical realities, known science, and even science fiction (kept firmly in the realistic), while also capture the current political and technological truths. In "Ode to Autocorrect," she writes:

"Because Blvd morphed to Bled, spirit

summoned with a Ouija board. Because
soap holder went love hen, though love
had flown the Calycanthus

like the grilled portabellos messing
with his vowels. Please please, I pleaded
to the pleading day. Because prayer

is like a bread line, a penny for your
exploded mind."

Silano juggles words like flaming batons, while keep her focus and managing to tell a story amidst the dangerous action. She takes the reader on a journey into space (with gerbils, no less), aimed for the future and the colonization of Mars. Yet she keeps the reader contemplating this actual world by pushing beyond its limits, summing up what the times with the last line of the book in "Break-Away Effect": "and me with just one wish: to never return."

This is a strong, enjoyable book. Entertaining and insightful. Highly recommended.

[Bk Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the prismatic naturalist mind in evidence in these poems--the keen eye and the scientific patience behind it, and the sinew of the sentences that document its findings. Don't miss “I am the miraculous” and “Nearly Every Songbird on Earth Is Eating Plastic.” This is a metaphysics we need now.

[Hailey Leithauser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Craft, wit, intelligence and sound - Everything I ask of poetry

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with almost any poetry collection, there were some poems I liked more than others in this one. Some poems I felt a bit bewildered by, their thickness of sound, their rich music, distracting me from meaning a bit. Still, overall, a lovely collection.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

In GRAVITY ASSIST, Martha Silano makes poetry out of scientific fact and jargon. Whether she is writing about the sex lives of trilobites or climate change, her fresh take on the natural world and the beings that inhabit it is marvelous. She has a gift for word play and word mash-ups that may not make logical sense but absolutely make emotional sense. In "Here I am," we find her "weed-whacking with a spatula / flipping hash browns with an emory board / filing my nails with a knife." In "The World," she describes our planet as "this big-bang progeny / making of a seafloor / / a butter-and-eggs and blazing star prairie, for he is the feline of reinvention, / of meander." Even when she is writing about somber topics, Silano's poetry is expansive, playful, and exuberant. Her work is a joy to read.

[David Cazden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever said this about a book of poetry before, but I learned some things about science and the earth from reading Gravity Assist. That says something since I've a hard science degree and decent general knowledge, so I thought. That does not mean there is any slacking off in the poetry department--this is poetry first, second and third. Its deeply powerful, extended and glassine-sharp language is infused with celestial energy. Martha Silano has a broad knowledge of "things," from geology to astronomy, and all the wonder in between, and she transforms the stuff of science into strings of diamonds. Readable, informative, with the energy of a supernova, like lava hitting the sea. Group Martha Silano with Pattiann Rogers and A.R. Ammons.

[Jason Ly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got kinda lost in the vocab and would often get half way through and not remember what I just read. My favorite I think is "Instead of a father" (pg13) with its volcanic theme. There's a lot of neat play with form here and poems where the text is a continuation of the title. I enjoyed the space themed poems more than the nature/other subject ones.

[Clay Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good poems. Spectacular book cover