Infinities: Poems [Paperback]

Lucille Lang Day (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2002

Poetry. "Like any true poet, Lucille Lang Day scans the outer world of jungles and stars for clues to the inner universe of feeling and thought. She does this by exploring scientific language and ideas for hints-metaphors, facts, images-that might reveal something about the meaning of personal experience. Her poems are eloquent, imaginative, and informed by a knowledge of contemporary science. The creation she honors is God's, the vast ineffable realm of macro-and-microscopic nature. By doing this she honors as well the persistent, equally ineffable mystery of the human realm"-Kurt Brown.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Day explores scientific concepts from astrophysics to marine biology with erudite care but always infuses the poems with tangible emotion. -- Dana Gioia

Day handles difficult subjects and their vocabularies deftly and with with and ease. We need voices like hers... -- Pattiann Rogers

About the Author

Lucille Lang Day is the author of five full-length poetry collections: THE CURVATURE OF BLUE (Cervena Barva, 2009), INFINITIES (Cedar Hill, 2002) WILD ONE (Scarlet Tanager, 2000), FIRE IN THE GARDEN (Mother's Hen, 1997), and Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope (Berkeley Poets' Workshop and Press, 1982), which received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award. She has also published three poetry chapbooks. Chain Letter, her children's book, was published by Heyday in 2005. She received her M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing at San Francisco State University, and her M.A. in zoology and Ph.D. in science and mathematics education at the University of California at Berkeley.

Product Details

• Paperback: 82 pages
• Publisher: Cedar Hill Books (February 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891812319
• ISBN-13: 978-1891812316
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,350,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lucille Lang Day is the author of a children's book, Chain Letter (Heyday), and eight poetry collections and chapbooks, including The Curvature of Blue (Cervena Barva) and Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope (BPW&P), which received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature. She also co-authored a textbook, How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science (Dale Seymour). She received her M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing at San Francisco State University, and her M.A. in zoology and Ph.D. in science and mathematics education at the University of California at Berkeley. The founder and director of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she also served for 17 years as the director of the Hall of Health, an interactive children's museum in Berkeley.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An Exploration of Infinites, March 29, 2002

By 

Jack. Foley (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Infinities: Poems (Paperback)

What is it like to live in the universe of modern science? Not merely to understand that universe or to teach it but to live in it. Lucille Lang Day's "Infinities" is an exploration of that question: quantum physics, the biosphere, the internal ("inner space") are all portions of her answer. Oppositins constantly threaten the dance (not the unity) of the poet's selfhood, yet it is her magic to dissolve contradiction with language. Correspondences abound: stars--the "fruit" of the sky--touch in her imagination the "fruit" of the earth: "lemons, oranges,...apples glowing / on the breakfast table." In what are surely some of the most extraordinary dramatic monologues ever written, the poet's human eroticism allows her to empathize with creatures like the stickleback ("His belly undulates. / I am mesmerized / by its redness") and the fence lizard ("He spends his days eating beetles, / sunning himself / and doing push-ups / on a fallen tree to impress me"). Yet the very same univrse which causes Day to feel a sense of ecstasy also inspires fear--a deep theme of the book: "So everything is nothing. / I may be going crazy...God / plays dice with the universe." The author glories in consciousness--which is to say, in being awake--yet "insomnia" also exists as a threat: "All eleven dimensions / of space and time exist / in my brain...I can't turn it off."

The description of Nature has always been an important aspect of California writing. In this brilliant book, Lucille Lang Day has found an entirely new way to do it. Her explorations of both human and nonhuman perspectives--of infinities and infinities--are impeccably and superbly alive. Here, even a tumor speaks: "I begin to sing. I am / a tiny siren / calling the capillaries...."