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Diary of a Cell
by Jennifer Gresham
Poetry $12.00
Praise for Diary of a Cell
Click Here for a review of Diary of a Cell in Chemical and Engineering News!
"In Diary of a Cell, Jennifer Gresham lays a
sharply focused lens of language on the surface of experience to learn, as
she says in 'Anatomy', 'the secrets out of the deep.' The depths here are
not measured in fathoms or leagues but by the complicated and complex scale
of human emotions. Gresham is a clear-headed and clear-eyed poet who understands
'why the memory of kindness/can find us in the dark' and her debut volume
radiates with the light of this discovery."
- Michael Collier
"The poems in this deeply intelligent book by Jennifer Gresham are held
in a delicate balance at the intersection of science and language, loyal to
both, conjuring out of them a new, phosphorescent diagram of our mysterious
and familiar world."
- Molly Fisk
"Full of accurate analogies and well-drawn parallels,
Diary of a Cell is an intelligent book--we expect
that from a scientist; but it is more. It's lyrical ('At dusk, we retreat
the way / we came, following the tributaries / of cement to suburbs like an
undertow...). It's passionate ('You hated him every time / he raised his hand,
/ for the way teachers / knit his words into lace...'). It's tender ('...why
the memory of kindness / can find us in the dark...'). It's brutal, and scathing
('I will miss everything / about your hard boy / except the back of your hand...').
It's funny ('Scientists are like beetles / Crawling over the earth, antennae
twitching...'). Above all, though, Diary of a Cell
is poetic—not in a namby-pamby, sensitive-soul-in-an-insensitive-world
way; in the strong and competent sense of poietes: maker."
- Charles Harper Webb (from the introduction)
