About the Book
This is science poetry as it ought to be: profound, accessible, and endlessly fascinating. John Mannone gives us poems where black holes and love coexist, where the beauty of Saturn's rings resonates alongside memories of Earth. An essential collection for stargazers and dreamers alike. Les Johnson - Author, Futurist, and Chief Technology Officer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (retired)Poet John Mannone captures the poetry of planets and distant galaxies, from the cosmic microwave radiation and birth of the universe to the distant future, and returns us again to ask about the ultimate fate of our beautiful, fragile planet Earth. He celebrates Voyager and Hubble; the fusion glow of the sun, and dark matter; and billions of years of time and space. His poetry explores the universe, asking, where do we go, when the sun fails us? Will we travel to distant stars, and what strange planets, what strange life will we discover? Geoffrey Landis, a NASA John Glen Research Center scientist, and recipient of the Hugo, Nebula, and Robert A. Heinlein AwardsDecades ago, novelist and chemist C.P. Snow defined the "two cultures" problem as the unfortunate split between the arts and the sciences. In Space Exploration: Strange New Worlds John Mannone's poems address this split directly; they resonate with readers by exploring what astronomy is teaching us from a deeply human perspective. Light-years of distance do not and cannot dilute our dreams: "...we look back, / see only a smattering of planets / and our home, that bone-white speck / in the glare of a dimming sun." And yet, despite the cold vastness of space, the author does not forget the now, the personal: "My daughter squints through / the special glass. I wonder / if she thinks about midnight // worlds that canopy the sky / with light." The poems in this collection vary in structure and subject, but consistently fuse the beauty of astronomy with the reverence and wonder of a poet. Arthur Stewart, an aquatic ecologist, science educator, essayist and poet, is the author of Logjam and "Yes, but ..."
About the Author :
John C. Mannone achieved a PhD [all but the dissertation defense] in Electrical Engineering on expanded space charge theory in dielectric fluids (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 2002), an MS in Physics specializing in plasma physics (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 1988), an MS in Physical & Theoretical Chemistry specializing in photoelectron spectroscopy (Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 1978), and a BS in Chemistry (Loyola University, Baltimore, MD, 1970). His research interests are in astrophysical plasmas and electromagnetic theory.As a research chemist for Martin Marietta Laboratories in Baltimore, he worked on life detection systems on the Viking missions as well as on accelerated aging of electro explosives used on the Voyager missions. He met Carl Sagan there, a visiting lecturer, before he became famous.He served as a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador for Tennessee and editor of the Journal of Radio Astronomy for SARA.He has a passion for the literary arts since 2004, and often fuses art with science. Mannone has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He won the Dwarf Stars Award (2020); was awarded an HWA Scholarship (2017), and a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature. He served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His full-length collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet's Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines (Linnet's Wings Press, 2022), Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023, a Weatherford Award nominee), Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2024, a semifinalist for the 2025 Tennessee Book Award), and Dark Wind, Dark Water, a novella-length horror fiction collection forthcoming from Mind's Eye Publishing (2025). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and Silver Blade. He's a retired professor of physics teaching science, mathematics, and creative writing in East Tennessee whenever he gets the opportunity.
