Product Description

Rebecca Elson was an astronomer. Her work took her to the boundary of the visible and measurable. "Facts are only as interesting as the possibilities they open up to the imagination", she wrote. Her research involved "dark matter" - hidden mass which can be inferred only from its influence on observable objects: "As if, from fireflies, one could infer the field". Her poems, too, make inferences and speculate, setting out always from meticulous observation and not deterred by a knowledge of how little we can know of the universe. She agreed with Einstein's "A clear explanation that anyone can understand": she makes it possible for general readers to imagine how space curves, how each of us centres a universe of our own, and how much more there may be than our technologically enhanced perceptions allow us to experience. Extracts from notebooks record the ways in which she refined her understanding. "A Responsibility to Awe" collects her best poetry and extracts from her notebooks. An autobiographical essay provides background to this alert imagination, from her upbringing as a geologist's daughter in Canada to her scientific career around the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #257197 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

About the Author
Rebecca Elson completed her Ph.D. in astronomy at Cambridge, where she received an Isaac Newton Scholarship. She began publishing her poetry while working on her first Hubble space telescope data at Princeton and researching at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics. She died in Cambridge in 1999.

Customer Reviews

Remarkable poetry from a serious scientist, and much more.
A very unusual book. A must for anyone with a passion for life or interested in contemporary poetry or the life of contemporary scientists. Buy it even if you would not normally dream of buying poetry.

Published in Carcanet's Oxford Poets series, the book contains much more than Elson's fine poetry. Its publication is thus a bold and very welcome move by Carcanet.

Elson was a serious scientist (astronomer) and a remarkable poet too. She was married to the Italian artist, Angelo di Cintio. She was born and raised in Canada and she studied and worked in the United States and Australia as well as the UK. She studied particularly globular clusters (of stars). She must be the only astronomer to have taught creative writing at Harvard and to have published a poem called "Hanging out his Boxer Shorts to Dry".

The title comes from the book's first poem "We Astronomers". Her wonder at and admiration of the universe and objects generally is joined in her poetry with her passion for life and its emotional richness. Her pleasure in places and people is manifest.

Extracts from her literary journal show her keen observation of and joy in life as well as how she gropes for the right combinations of ideas and words in creating her poems. They also show her coping with terminal cancer in a life-affirming manner and with remarkable spirit and self knowledge. Fresh and vibrant - written quickly in pencil in her notebooks - the journal is quite extraordinarily rich.

And a short biographical essay telling of her work as a female scientist in male dominated institutions is both a fascinating social history and shows some of the strength of character which sustained her during her last illness. "... classes and seminars where I was the only woman. Often it felt like walking into the men's bathroom by mistake."

The material itself and the sequencing of both the poems and the selection of journal extracts make this book remarkable...