It’s a powerful combination that continues throughout the book as the boy becomes man. Regardless of the pain, action, and outward progression of the poetry's subject, each poem is underscored by an intense love affair with the natural processes of life and death. This is a very personal portrait that encompasses Darwin’s wife Emily, his children, and the day to day attentions that take up most of our lives. There is humour too, in pantry lists, in jocular interchanges, in poking fun at his own odd interest in insects, or in the joyous scientific portrayal of his firstborn’s birth:
Good spec. for testing
the limits of inheritance—
& emotion in man.
I could not exactly see the heart
but felt mine skip.
Squalus Darwinii !!!
I cried
but my wife insists:
William Erasmus. (“December 27th, 1839”)
At the back of The Darwin Poems are extensive notes, which form a biographical backdrop to the poetry. The notes provide an interesting context for the work, bringing in a nonfiction reference point that adds depth to the more surreal intensity of the poems. I found myself reading the notes in conjunction with the poetry, and allowing both the real history and the fictional character to meld into one where the truth seemed almost a given. Always, throughout the book, one has the feeling that it is that deeper truth that Ballou is striving for. While The Darwin Poems is a moving biography of a man who spent his life in the pursuit of truth, in many ways it is more than a portrait of Darwin. The book poses questions that are relevant and still fresh for modern readers:
The bead of life immersed
in salt-water for forty days and forty nights
when planted, still cracks
open, pours forth
its small green life, its shootable, edible tendril,
its fingerprint of possibility.
Each poem stands alone and it is possible to read them in isolation, but whether Darwin is studying, travelling, testing hypotheses, raising children, reflecting on life and death, or dying, there is a real sense of the humanity behind the legend - something that the reader can identify with. In this portrait, within the discovery, science, and that great world changing body of work that Darwin produced, is what Ballou calls the “green need”: “I am / in the end just a body / bursting / out of its love.” The Darwin Poems is built out of that need. It's a wonderful, beautifully written book that begs to be re-read.
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Article comments
1 - Terri-ann White
As the publisher of this exquisite volume I am thrilled to read this precise and careful review that picks up so many of its great qualities.
The only thing better than reading this book is hearing Emily Ballou read from it and talk about her fascinating entry into this project of writing Charles Darwin.
Thanks Maggie Ball.
terri-ann
2 - Magdalena Ball
Thanks so much Terri-ann. For those who would like to hear Emily read from The Darwin Poems live, as well as talk about the book, I'll be interviewing her at 12pm 28 Aug Au EST at The Compulsive Reader Talks. For those who miss the show, it will be available from that date as a podcast.