Can poetry act as an aesthetic amplification device, akin to a microscope, through which we can sense minute or nearly imperceptible phenomena such as the folding of molecules into their three-dimensional shapes, the transformations that make up the life cycle of a silkworm, or the vaporous movements that constitute the ever-shifting edges of clouds? We tend to think of these subjects as reserved for science, but, as Ada Smailbegović argues, twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers have intermingled scientific methodologies with poetic form to reveal unfolding processes of change. Their works can be envisioned as laboratories within which the methodologies of experimentation, natural historical description, and taxonomic classification allow poetic language to register the rhythms and durations of material transformation. Poetics of Liveliness moves across scales to explore the realms of molecules, fibers, tissues, and clouds. It investigates works such as Christian Bök’s insertion of a poetic text into the DNA code of living bacteria in order to generate a new poem in the shape of a protein molecule, Jen Bervin’s considerations of silk fibers and their use in biomedicine, Gertrude Stein’s examination of brain tissues in medical school and its subsequent influence on her literary taxonomies of character, and Lisa Robertson’s studies of nineteenth-century meteorology and the soft architecture of clouds. In their attempt to understand physical processes unfolding within lively material worlds, Smailbegović contends, these poets have developed a distinctive materialist poetics. Structured as a poetic cosmology akin to Lucretius’s “On the Nature of Things,” which begins at the atomic level and expands out to the vastness of the universe, Poetics of Liveliness provides an innovative and surprising vision of the relationship between science and poetry.

Contributors to this book argue that we should study the brain basis of language as used in our daily lives.

Rooted in traditional Japanese aesthetics and meditations on contemporary neuroscience, a stunning new volume from an essential American poet. Acclaimed as "one of the most fascinating female poets of our time" (BOMB), Kimiko Hahn is a shape-shifter, a poet who seeks novel forms for her utterly original subject matter and "stands as a welcome voice of experimentation and passion" (Bloomsbury Review). In Brain Fever, Hahn integrates the recent findings of science, ancient Japanese aesthetics, and observations from her life as a woman, wife, mother, daughter, and artist. Rooted in meditations on contemporary neuroscience, Brain Fever takes as its subject the mysteries of the human mind—the nature of dreams and memories, the possibly illusory nature of linear time, the complexity of conveying love to a child. In one poem, "A Bowl of Spaghetti," she cites a comparison that researchers draw between unraveling "the millions of miles of wires in the [human] brain" and "untangling a bowl of spaghetti," and thus she untangles a memory of her own: "I have an old photo: Rei in her high chair intently / picking out each strand to mash in her mouth. // Was she two? Was that sailor dress from mother? / Did I cook that sauce from scratch? If so, there was a carrot in the pot." Equally inspired by Sei Shonagon's tenth-century Pillow Book and the latest findings of cognitive research, Brain Fever is a thrilling blend of the timely and the timeless.

Christopher Collins introduces an exciting new field of research traversing evolutionary biology, anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and literary study. Paleopoetics maps the selective processes that originally shaped the human genus millions of years ago and prepared the human brain to play, imagine, empathize, and engage in fictive thought as mediated by language. A manifestation of the "cognitive turn" in the humanities, Paleopoetics calls for a broader, more integrated interpretation of the reading experience, one that restores our connection to the ancient methods of thought production still resonating within us. Speaking with authority on the scientific aspects of cognitive poetics, Collins proposes reading literature using cognitive skills that predate language and writing. These include the brain's capacity to perceive the visible world, store its images, and retrieve them later to form simulated mental events. Long before humans could share stories through speech, they perceived, remembered, and imagined their own inner narratives. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, Collins builds an evolutionary bridge between humans' development of sensorimotor skills and their achievement of linguistic cognition, bringing current scientific perspective to such issues as the structure of narrative, the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, the relation of rhetoric to poetics, the relevance of performance theory to reading, the difference between orality and writing, and the nature of play and imagination.

Access heightened states of consciousness to enliven and expand your creative process. "Trance Poetics poses neurological frameworks for entering such mysterious realms as divine inspiration, epiphany, metaphor, free association and automatic writing. As Prevallet takes the reader on a wild brain-mapping adventure, she continuously traces a history of language that reifies the power of poetic intelligence." - Marissa Perel Trance Poetics is a magnificent guide to hidden sources of linguistic happiness. Kristin Prevallet gives inspiring, practical advice on how to invigorate one's creative practice, and how to rediscover the delight of unfettered play. This book-a magical toolkit-has the power to reawaken dormant verbal resources in all of us. Rapture and gratitude are logical responses to the gift that Trance Poetics bestows on its lucky readers. - Wayne Koestenbaum Drawing from the fields of clinical hypnosis, neuroscience, energy psychology, and poetics TRANCE POETICS: YOUR WRITING MIND will stimulate your creative and intellectual processes and give you new ways to access the images, memories, feelings, and language that lie beneath the surface of your conscious awareness. You will learn how to use your creative processes to communicate with your body to both generate creative material and move through emotional blocks. A guide into the world of poetry, language, and consciousness this book will bring a freshness and authenticity to your writing process. "Is there a more important -- or more necessary -- vocation for poets today than showing others a way to process for themselves the epiphanic possibilities of our beautiful, difficult existence? To experience these beautiful difficulties, as Kristin suggests in these pages, in ways that reconfigure one's most deeply-held beliefs regarding self and world? Trance Poetics: Your Writing Mind is more than just a navigational tool for poets; it is handbook of epiphanic possibilities for absolutely everyone interested in living fully alive." - Sharon Mesmer

The heart of this study consists of Collins's application of six "cognitive modes" of reading: perception, retrospection, assertion, introspection, expectation, and judgment. In addition, Collins considers the impact of the movement from oral to print-literate culture.

In Feeling as a Foreign Language, Alice Fulton considers poetry's uncanny ability to access and recreate emotions so wayward they go unnamed. Fulton contemplates topics ranging from the intricacies of a rare genetic syndrome to fractals from the aesthetics of complexity theory to the need for "cultural incorrectness." Along the way, she falls in love with an outrageous 17th century poet, argues for a Dickinsonian tradition in American letters, and calls for a courageous poetics of inconvenient knowledge.

This is the first major book in English on literary reading to be based on empirical methods. Moving the focus away from interpretation to the experience of literary texts, these studies demonstrate the role played by feeling in readers' responses, showing how feeling performs important functions during reading that cannot be accounted for by cognitive understanding. These studies not only reinvigorate the concept of literariness, they are also thoroughly interdisciplinary, offering a coherent approach to literary reading that draws on literary theory, psychology, neuropsychology, and evolutionary psychology. Several chapters help to introduce the empirical approach for students.

Award-winning poet Alison Calder attempts to map the brain's neural connections, raising fundamental questions about identity and interiority. Juxtaposed against the scientific-like footnotes, these poems ask us to think about the way we perceive--and the ways in which we seek to know ourselves and others.

What are the poetics of everyday life ? What can they teach us about God? Art, music, dance, and writing can certainly be poetic, but so can such diverse pastimes as fishing, skiing, or attending sports events. Any and all activities that satisfy our fundamental need for play, for celebration, and for ritual, says William Dyrness, are inherently poetic and in Poetic Theology he demonstrates that all such activities are places where God is active in the world. All of humanity s creative efforts, Dyrness points out, testify to our intrinsic longing for joy and delight and our deep desire to connect with others, with the created order, and especially with the Creator. This desire is rooted in the presence and calling of God in and through the good creation. With extensive reflection on aesthetics in spirituality, worship, and community development, Dyrness s Poetic Theology will be useful for all who seek fresh and powerful new ways to communicate the gospel in contemporary society. William Dyrness s bold invitation to a poetic theology shaped by Scripture, tradition, and imagination one luring us toward a fuller participation in beauty than argument or concept alone allow reminds us that truth itself is beautiful to behold and poetic to the core. . . . If poetry is in its deepest reflex an intensification of life, then Dyrness s call for a poetic theology is one we ignore at our peril, reminding us that faithful living is not only about proper thinking but also and, perhaps, more properly about the texture of our living and the quality of our loving. Mark S. Burrows Andover Newton Theological School Makes a strong case for aesthetics as one of the avenues used by God to draw human beings near to him and his glory. . . . A wonderful journey through Reformed spirituality and a wake-up call for Reformed theology. Cornelius van der Kooi Free University, Amsterdam