Mary Peelen’s spare poems pulse with what they contain and describe–in both the imagistic and the mathematical sense of the word–harnessing the power of the sciences to navigate the chthonic worlds of illness, loss, and desire on both personal and planetary scales. Peelen denies the divisions of mind and body, art and science, precision and ardor. Her poems resonate with allusion (Lady Lazarus’s hair as a supernova) and sound (copernicium, ununoctium). Peelen unveils new ways to make sense of our complicated, contradictory world.

– Elizabeth Bradfeld, naturalist and author of Once Removed