Curve Away from Stillness: Science Poems

Front Cover
New Directions Publishing, 1989 - Literary Criticism - 83 pages

In Curve Away from Stillness, John Allman affirms the connections between poetry and science. They are, he says, as "old as the ones between poetry and cosmology, beauty and knowledge, pleasure and speculation." In reading this collection of "Science Poems," we are reminded of a philosophical tradition in literature that, with Lucretius, sees in the power of love the binding force of the universe. Allman's poems, however--meditations on "Physics," "Chemistry," "Biology," essential "Principles," the "Planets"--are grounded in the science of our time, in all its elegance and awesomeness.

Curve Away from Stillness is Allman's fourth book of poetry, his third with New Directions. His previous publications include Scenarios for a Mixed Landscape (1986), speculative reflections on art and nature; the "historical epiphanies" of Clio's Children (1985); and Walking Four Ways in the Wind (Princeton University Press, 1979).

 

Selected pages

Contents

Physics
15
Planets
56
Biology
71
Copyright

Common terms and phrases

100 More Poems ammonia Anthology asteroids Beetle Leg belix beneath layers bimself bird blind blood body Book breath bunger Classics Revisited clouds cold Collected Poems color Confucius core crackling crystals curve darkness death Desert Dogwood Lane door dream driveway dust Earth's edge Einstein emptiness eyes Ezra Pound fictive finch glass gravity habitat hearing heat Hummingbird hyaline igneous imagine Inuit James Joyce Japanese John Allman Joyce Jupiter light lungs metals metaphor mimosa mind mirror Mixed Landscape molecular moon motion movement moving myths Neptune Number one's orbit out-there particles Paul Valéry physical pine Pluto poetry and science Princeton University Robert Rock salt sand scientific Selected Letters Selected Poems Selected Poetry Selected Writings shadow sing skin slide slow song sound space strip sulfur surface swirl thin Thomas Merton trees twisting University Vittorini voice walk wall wave Williams wind woman yellow YORK UNIVERSITY zero

About the author (1989)

John Allman (1935- ) is a contemporary American poet and novelist who spent his childhood in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. In 1943 he moved with his to Astoria, Queens, where he attended William Cullen Bryant High School until dropping out in 1952. He earned his diploma at night school while working as a laboratory technician in the product control labs of Pepsi-Cola. He then enrolled in Brooklyn College, as a pre-med student, but later transferred to Hunter College in the Bronx. After a period of time spent in California, as a technician, he settled on studying the humanities and chose to become a writer. For his MA in English literature and creative writing from Syracuse University, he studied with Donald Dike, Cecil Lang, Philip Booth and Delmore Schwartz. Allman has received The Helen Bulls Prize from Poetry Northwest, a Pushcart Poetry Prize, and two National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships in Poetry (1984 and 1990). His work has been widely published in such magazines as The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and The Massachusetts Review.

Bibliographic information

TitleCurve Away from Stillness: Science Poems
Literature Online - Twentieth-Century American Poetry
Volume 667 of New Directions paperbook
AuthorJohn Allman
Editionillustrated
PublisherNew Directions Publishing, 1989
ISBN0811210812, 9780811210812
Length83 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Literary Criticism / General
Literary Criticism / Poetry
Poetry / American / General
Poetry / General
  
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