Be Still Mere Molecule, Be Still Mere Molecule

Be Still Mere Molecule draws us in in jubilation, in the squishy ecstasy of emergence: “fallen/bodies/tumble into connection/sedges cloak the muck/step in, step in” – and we do! Seducing with ‘mycelial language,’ this deeply grounded collection invites us to go on a field trip with a luxuriant botanist who sings plant names into a ‘web of nurture.’ Here’s a weft of pain/breath, the luster of a pearl’s lacquer, pleading birds, quartz cliffs refracting the spark-sheen. Rebecca Durham calls to the tendrils in a deep ecopoetic symphony, and they respond in glory: “You rise to cultivate these green galaxies/like rootlets sprung from a stellate maze.”—Petra Kuppers, author of Eco Soma and Diver Beneath the StreetRebecca Durham’s most recent collection of poems, Be Still Mere Molecule, is a wonder. Durham is equal parts poet and scientist. The speaker is an observer of emotional depth, profoundly engaged with the physical world. The scientist observes and names. The poet, attuned to sensory and tonal connections, understands how the shepherding of sound can create unique subliminal tones. The poet hears the musicality intrinsic to the language of science. Nomenclature becomes a concordance of cadence. She shares a world that few of us have the vocabulary or knowledge to travel on our own. Durham wants to share with us how she sees our world. Take a walk with Rebecca Durham. Let her share the world she is discovering.—Gerald Wagoner, author of When Nothing Wild Remains and A Month of SomedayBe Still Mere Molecule is a deep and joyful exploration of the natural sciences prismed through the lens of poetry. Using her extensive knowledge of botany and ecology, Durham deftly integrates scientific terms, equations, and chemical structures in her poems, creating a rich “mycelial language” that binds concepts and processes from nature with themes of wonder, longing, and environmental loss. Durham speaks with scientific precision and emotional urgency about environmental threats as she chronicles the “blind hum of hostile elements” in the human body or how “the golden-crowned kinglet collides with glass”. Yet, this collection is also “a chant for wholeness” permeated by enduring beauty and resilience as Durham reminds us “at long last the ice recedes / and the first bird-wakes ripple the open water” and how “joy must be self-taught / again and again, continuous.”—Laurel Anderson, plant ecologist and poet