Curve Away from Stillness

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).