About the Book
Anthropologist Robert Bates Graber's 165 sonnets constitute a sort of "dig"-- the kind which unearths connections between a volcano spewing hot lava and Pluto, Roman god of the underworld, or the kind a comedian might use to bury a politician--or the kind of digging a scholar does when he's studying the role of rivalries in the development of telescopes, or of sexism in the history of science. After Pluto got plutoed, a friend asked Graber, "Does plutonium still get to be an element?" and Graber found himself digging into new fields full of fertile theories and fascinating people.
As a maker of patterns, Graber enjoys the challenge of using (and occasionally abusing) a highly regarded poetic form, the fourteen-line, 140-syllable, sonnet, with its expected rhythm and rhyme scheme. As a professional seeker, he also maintains a wry awareness of how metaphors work. "Gravity" can apply to planets orbiting stars, inventors orbiting patrons, hungry suitors circling the fathers of potential brides. Gravity can mean stability, or loss of ability to move. "Building" has perhaps an even wider range of analogues: clever rogues build trust; rich men build observatories; astronomers build elegant theories; jealous lovers build traps, and mythic deities build both chaos and wisdom. Puns are part of the plan, too, involving twists of language. Alexander Pope was famously wrong when he called puns "the lowest form of humor." Rather, they're a respite, a detour that reminds readers that words are too bendable to be fully trusted. After all, "stability" contains the word "stab." The god/planet named Uranus stars in both serious and vaguely scatological sonnets in this collection.
There is a learning curve in this collection: readers who know nothing about the history of astronomy or Roman mythology or Europe might want to have their cell phones handy to provide context for, say, how Jupiter (the god, not the planet) handled Callisto (a Roman nymph and one of Jupiter's moons). "Look deeper if things don't add up" says Sonnet LXVI. That said, even without fully understanding how Caroline Herschel "showed that knowing knows no gender" or why Antoine Lavoisier was beheaded, the poems demonstrate humans-and ancient gods-- making decisions, often based on faulty assumptions and with flawed motives. Graber presents great astronomers making patterns, studying the skies, even analyzing the chemical elements making up the "ground beneath our feet." But ... was Galileo heartless when he sent his daughters off to nunneries? (XXVII)
Graber's sonnets are arranged in roughly chronological order around particular scientists and their discoveries, theories, strengths and foibles; but there's a cyclic sensibility at work, too, as theories get scorched and revised, and mythic names tie modern to ancient ways of wondering. This dimension gets its fullest development in XCVI-CXIV, eighteen sonnets presenting a deconstructed-reconstructed version of the "rape" of Proserpina by Pluto, god of the underworld. That story echoes in later poems about more recent astronomers still searching and adjusting data in ways that eventually reduced Pluto's status from god-sized to powerless dwarf. (And who can understand why huge planets sometimes orbit very small stars?)
As the edition published by now-defunct Publish America asked, "If you don't know what a Russian bigamist, a kleptomaniac, buckets of urine, and a place called French Lick have to do with the history of astronomy, this is the book for you! "
About the Author :
Robert Bates Graber ("Rob") is an emeritus professor of anthropology at Truman State University. Author of four scholarly books and many articles, he lives with his wife, Rose, in Kirksville, MO, where he enjoys backyard astronomy and classical guitar.
Review :
As someone who cherishes both anthropology and the story of scientific discovery, I found this collection of Shakespearean sonnets to be an absolute gem-thought-provoking, beautifully written, and deeply satisfying... a labor of love by the author.
Anton Daughters, author of Memories of earth and sea: an ethnographic history of the Islands of Chiloé
You might not won't find Great Poetry in Plutonic Sonnets, but you will find poetry that is great fun to read and endlessly inventive. The poems could be characterized as little essays that just happen to be in Sonnet form - meter and all. Like the Shakespearean sonnets on which they're based, they're little arguments, sometimes conflicting, sometimes with a twist, that find resolution in swift epigrammatic couplets - a neat, rhetorical summing up....
Read Graber's poetry for the almost Elizabethan joy he takes in working out ideas and narratives. [It's] a pleasure to read the Mythology [which] he treats with tongue in cheek.... [Still, the Science] is the facet that most distinguishes Plutonic Sonnets. The audience for this book will be the one who enjoys Graber's playful references to Mythology, his irreverent odes to the foibles of great scientists, and his ability to sum up scientific grandiosity within the space of a sonnet. Each sonnet is a teaspoon of sugar for the knowledgeable grownup.
Patrick Gillespie, PoemShape blogger; author of Tiny House, Big Mountain and North of Autumn
