Synopses & Reviews
At the crossroads of science, mathematics, and art lives Quiver, a stunning collection of poems that seeks to reconcile the empirical truths of science with the emotional truths of human experience. Through an ambitious set of poetic series and sequences, Somers-Willett reinvents the love poem, rendering an exquisite world where the graph of a mathematical equation can become the image of "love's witness / running with its arms open all the way home." With a deft, meditative sense of music, Quiver reveals a relationship between science and human sentiment that is as surprising as it is profound.
Review
"In Susan B. A. Somers-Willett's Quiver, poetic imagination and scientific theory merge as 'math enacts speculation' and 'the beloved atoms sing.' Darwin, Oppenheimer, and the Curies appear amid the images and meditations rendered by her generous, yet discerning skill. Somers-Willett is a poet as passionate and inventive as the radical thinkers she counts among her muses. Quiver is a marvel of exacting speculation and song."—Terrance Hayes, author of Wind in a Box
Review
"The poems in Quiver reverberate with the ravishing and harrowing erotics of the natural world as they consider first and last things, figure and ground, the visible and reticent. In the nineteenth century, a prophetic Whitman sang the body electric. Here, in a powerfully imaginative group of poems on the Curies, radium opens its mouth 'to crow / the dawn atomic.' Such richly observant poems 'glow in the small moments,' even as they take on the largest subjects. Susan B. A. Somers-Willett is a marvelously intelligent poet, attentive to the possibilities of nature and language, the reciprocity of all that is.”—Alice Fulton, author of Cascade Experiment
Review
"Quiver is about the connection between the natural world and how we live in it. Whether about physics, relationships, or pure observation, it's the language of these poems—rich with stunning lyricism, rich with not merely fact, but also many truths—that Susan B. A. Somers-Willett uses to unlock the secrets of this world. She lays out the factors of metaphor and music in surprising ways, and her solution for X is always satisfying, ringing with the thrill of discovery and unvarnished emotion. These gifts are why 'I will travel the black lines, nearly out of sight . . . / I will ride the light's bending into this inverted world,' trusting the poet every step of this journey."—A. Van Jordan, author of Quantum Lyrics
Review
"Anyone fascinated by what comes of the passionate coupling of science and art will devour this collection of poems. Somers-Willett's poetic imagination plumbs the wonders and mysteries of dark matter, relativity, atomic physics, and natural history with lyricism, reverence, and delight."—Orion Magazine
About the Author
Susan B. A. Somers-Willett is the author of a book of poetry, Roam, and a book of criticism, The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America. She is an assistant professor of English at Montclair State University.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Quiver 1
Dark Matter: A Love Story
Dark Matter: A Love Story 5
A Natural Order
Relativity 15
The Order of a House 17
Darwin Strikes a Match 19
The Golden Lesson 21
Survival of the Fittest
At Four a.m., She Is Reminded of Survival of the Fittest 27
Weaving Qiviut 28
Polaris 30
Adaptation 32
It Will Be a Moment Ordinary as This 33
Everything from Shells 34
My Natural History 37
Cities of Amber, Cities of Stone 38
Oppenheimer’s Lament 40
Proof 41
The Living Chamber 43
Ave
Thaw and the Beginning of Everything 49
Cotyledon 50
First Sex 51
Crossing Drosophila 53
Campanology 54
The Abandoned Garden 55
Radium Music
Radium: Serenade 59
Love as an Aid to Hypothesis 60
Half-Life 61
Horses 62
Automatic Writing 63
Radium: Aubade 64
Praise
Zero: A Meditation 67
Winter Solstice at Thirty-Three 69
The M in M-Theory 71
Work 73
The Anthropology of Gold 74
Notes 77