John Ronan
Mary Shelley and the Knockout Mouse
Biology talks awkwardly about the brain:
Stria terminalis, subcortex, infralimbic−
Nothing like noggin or knock-on-wood.
As astronomy the trodden, telescoped moon:
Clavius, Concordiae… Sinus Iridium’s
Better, but who reads Bay of Rainbows?
It’s the flint rigidity of Latin, that larynx
Lock on language, and the obdurate slog
Of science as it designates and details, conjures
The new, the fangled, the fear in Frankenstein.
Don’t worry, this won’t be a Woe-is-Us-Poem,
A luddite lamenting of modern, the unknown,
Or like Shelley with her cobbled creature, uneasy.
Metaphor’s the monster, making facts
Of the matter bend to a softer sense−
Noggin or marbles, the mind’s eye,
Clavius resolved to muse, moonbeam.
As dose cloud and the comical quark
Call physics home from the cold,
So balance of nature (Mother Nature)
Holystones heredity, the noir of Darwin,
And Milky Way the ache of space.
For modern fears, for Mary’s, the amending
Texts are symmetry and the soothing lunatic,
The lab hobgoblin a knockout mouse,
Bent depending on the light and lens
Of alibi art, the noodle, truth.
John Ronan is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, 1999-2000. His most recent book, Marrowbone Lane, appeared in 2009 (Backwaters Press); Linda Pastan has called his work "Very good indeed: original, assured, just a touch sardonic." Poems have appeared in Confrontation, Folio, Threepenny Review, The Recorder, Hollins Critic, New England Review, Southern Poetry Review, Louisville Review, Greensboro Review, Notre Dame Review, NYQ, among others. Find more here: TheRonan.org
Return to January 2014 Edition
Biology talks awkwardly about the brain:
Stria terminalis, subcortex, infralimbic−
Nothing like noggin or knock-on-wood.
As astronomy the trodden, telescoped moon:
Clavius, Concordiae… Sinus Iridium’s
Better, but who reads Bay of Rainbows?
It’s the flint rigidity of Latin, that larynx
Lock on language, and the obdurate slog
Of science as it designates and details, conjures
The new, the fangled, the fear in Frankenstein.
Don’t worry, this won’t be a Woe-is-Us-Poem,
A luddite lamenting of modern, the unknown,
Or like Shelley with her cobbled creature, uneasy.
Metaphor’s the monster, making facts
Of the matter bend to a softer sense−
Noggin or marbles, the mind’s eye,
Clavius resolved to muse, moonbeam.
As dose cloud and the comical quark
Call physics home from the cold,
So balance of nature (Mother Nature)
Holystones heredity, the noir of Darwin,
And Milky Way the ache of space.
For modern fears, for Mary’s, the amending
Texts are symmetry and the soothing lunatic,
The lab hobgoblin a knockout mouse,
Bent depending on the light and lens
Of alibi art, the noodle, truth.
John Ronan is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, 1999-2000. His most recent book, Marrowbone Lane, appeared in 2009 (Backwaters Press); Linda Pastan has called his work "Very good indeed: original, assured, just a touch sardonic." Poems have appeared in Confrontation, Folio, Threepenny Review, The Recorder, Hollins Critic, New England Review, Southern Poetry Review, Louisville Review, Greensboro Review, Notre Dame Review, NYQ, among others. Find more here: TheRonan.org
Return to January 2014 Edition