Space Exploration: Strange New Worlds

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 Awards

Decades 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 ..."