Unmaking Atoms
By Magdalena BallGenre: Poetry/ Science
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Ginninderra Press (January 11, 2017)
Language: English
190 Pages
ISBN-10: 1760412821
ISBN-13: 978-1760412821
Author's Web site: www.magdalenaball.com
Buy the book on Amazon
A Moment in Time
I always learn something new from Magdalena Ball’s poetry
and was excited that she has a new book that might satisfy my hunger for more
of her science-related poems. And so I was surprised to see an entire section titled
“Hieroglyphics” in Unmaking Atoms. That
discovery doubled my excitement because years ago I studied Egyptian hieroglyphics
for three long, confusing, and exciting semesters. It was a process that
entangled me in anything with even the mildest scent of Egypt about it and I
have visited that country several times since. But I was confused. Where was
the “science” in anything I had ever learned about that country, its history,
culture, people, language?
I’m telling you this story because Ball’s poetry is
nothing if not eclectic and wholly unexpected. I should have known she could
make the connection. In this section inspired by the Online at MoMA exhibition at
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/online/#works,
she says,
“the story you’ve
left in me
a ridge against
the inside
scar tissue
“like art, I
could make myself in positive integers
on carbon, memory
cutting figures across a black expanse
as I move through
these places, at grand scale
“finding a
tincture of who you were
each detail of
your absence, bringing back
the line and
curve that makes us whole.”
And so . . . now
I have a deeper sense of many of those things I thought I had come to know. And
science? Ball finds science everywhere
and—of course—it is everywhere
And this, dear
readers, is the beauty and the excitement of picking up a book of Ball’s poetry
and slowly, deliberately, letting that science permeate you awareness of
whatever she chooses to examine.
You won’t be
bored. You will have your senses awakened. And those who know and love
ekphrastic poetry are going to fall in love and want more of the modern art
exhibit that inspired it.
Isn’t all poetry
but a moment in a time? And isn’t science inundated with unseen time. Ball may
help you see time—and feel it.
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