A pioneering ethnobotanist, Gary Paul Nabhan credits the arts with sparking unlikely scientific breakthroughs and believes that such "cross-pollination" engenders new forms of expression that are essential to discovery. In this highly readable book, he tells four stories to illustrate this idea. In the first, coping with color blindness in art class leads to his career as a scientist; in the second, ancient American Indian songs, when translated, reveal an understanding of plants and animals that rivals modern research; in the third, a poem inspires an approach to diabetes using desert plants; and in the fourth, a coalition of scientists and artists creates the Ironwood Forest National Monument in the Sonoran Desert.
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Literary ethnobotanist Nabhan, a captivating storyteller in command of complex ecological thought, appeals to both our intellect and our imagination in his groundbreaking books, which include Coming Home to Eat (2002). In his latest thoughtful rumination, a contribution to the worthy Credo series that also includes Rick Bass, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and William Kittredge, Nabhan offers a fresh and stimulating analysis of the crucial role cross-pollination plays both in nature and in human endeavors. Drawing on such personal experiences as his own color-blindness to reveal how an unexpected "perceptual shift" can lead to new understanding, he recounts how an attentive reading of an O'odham song-poem about the profound relationship between the sacred datura and the hawkmoth yielded invaluable scientific knowledge, and how an Amy Clampitt poem helped him solve the puzzle of how desert foods once protected desert people from diabetes. Nabhan is at once scientist, mystic, and artist as he marvels over the surprising results of the usually covert cross-pollination between art and science, an interaction that truly does deserve more conscious cultivation. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"In Nabhan’s descriptions we are reminded that nature itself draws no artificial boundaries, that science and poetry intertwine effortlessly..." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune
"a book steeped in metaphor, as Nabhan navigates the mostly uncharted realm between science and poetry." -- Sunday Daily Sun, Flagstaff, AZ, December 21, 2003
Gary Paul Nabhan offers a short, focused look at the fruitful fusion of the scientific and the creative. -- Lisle Sun, April 9, 2004
He's been fascinated by cross-pollinations in its many forms--from insect-plant interdependence to the sharing of ideas among people. -- Science News, March 27, 2004
"a book steeped in metaphor, as Nabhan navigates the mostly uncharted realm between science and poetry." -- Sunday Daily Sun, Flagstaff, AZ, December 21, 2003
Gary Paul Nabhan offers a short, focused look at the fruitful fusion of the scientific and the creative. -- Lisle Sun, April 9, 2004
He's been fascinated by cross-pollinations in its many forms--from insect-plant interdependence to the sharing of ideas among people. -- Science News, March 27, 2004
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book,
This review is from: Cross-Pollinations: The Marriage of Science and Poetry (Credo) (Paperback)
Will absolutely read more of this author's work.
Learned a great deal.
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First Sentence:
The writer's life is much like that of a sphinx moth, which appears out of the darkness to hover suddenly above a freshly opened blossom, coming under the spell of its pungent perfumes. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
The writer's life is much like that of a sphinx moth, which appears out of the darkness to hover suddenly above a freshly opened blossom, coming under the spell of its pungent perfumes. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
5
books
cite this book:
- The Love of Impermanent Things: A Threshold Ecology (The World As Home) by Mary Rose O'Reilley in Back Matter
- The Pine Island Paradox (The World As Home) by Kathleen Dean Moore in Back Matter
- At the End of Ridge Road by Joseph Bruchac in Back Matter
- North to Katahdin by Eric Pinder in Back Matter
- The Pine Island Paradox: Making Connections in a Disconnected World (The World As Home) by Kathleen Dean Moore in Back Matter
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