Jeannine's poems in this feature are prose poems, two of them incorporating a haiku-like lyrical moment in the center, so they are like the Japanese haibun, often a poem of journey.
Two of them are about "the robot scientist's daughter" so I went on a little imaginative journey myself, off into speculative science fiction down one path, off into memory on another, and off into cyberspace on yet another, so my brain is tangled.
On the cyberspace journey, I landed on Jeannine's blog about poets who are scientists' daughters, which led to Kristin Berkey-Abbott's blog riffing on that topic, and I stayed to hear her report on the reef at Key Largo.
Oh, the poor ocean. Watch out for jellyfish!
10 comments:
amazing image.
I checked this EIL feature out the other day. The artwork's quite a draw. Lovely selection of Gailey's work.
Thanks again, Kathleen! And I finally (!) added this blog to my blogroll since I've been reading it for a year!
Thanks, Jeannine! I am now fascinated by this whole daughters of scientists thing.
I wrote it into a poem that was recently published in the literary magazine "The Journal" called "The Robot Scientist's Daughter [sleep deprivation.]" I thought you might enjoy it. Here it is as it is not available online:
The Experiments in Sleep Deprivation
They believed she was designed to be a supersoldier.
They used a CAT scan to look for infiltrants to her heart and lungs,
they kept her up all night with lights and sirens to test her will.
When she nodded off, they prodded her with needles.
She’s forgotten the lessons of mushrooms, of mongrels,
of her childhood. In fact, she can’t even remember running.
Is it possible it was all a dream? Now the grim facts march
before her: another enemy body part rebelling, another tamping
down of her own systems in order to observe and operate.
They try to tamper and tame her piece by piece.
In her dreams they are telling her about fluid in the lungs.
They ask her if she would rather be Margaret Atwood or Sylvia Plath.
Louise Gluck, she answers without thinking, because of the fabulous shoes.
Now there was a woman who knew how to garden,
she talked with the flowers, knew how to shop for cheese.
An enviable, contained life, as precise as the X-Acto knife
her father invented. The daughters of inventors are bound to
circumscribe their father’s creations with words.
In twenty days she has not slept the night. They think it’s impossible
to hold her. She throws the machines into mystification.
They cannot pin her down, not yet. She resists the urge to sing.
Great work at EIL and great work here. Your last paragraph reads like a poem just waiting for some line breaks. Love it.
Thanks, Sandy!
Wonderful art and poems. I especially love Turning Back. Something about that touched me. I remember one of my cousins sobbing when we found our grandparent's home had been razed years after they were no longer living. Something tender.
Thanks, Kim!
Thanks to Andressa and Maureen, too! Somehow I failed to say so earlier!
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