I first discovered the Bycatch project (I think that’s the right word) when I stumbled across two poems, “Pacific Seahorse” and “Shovelnose Guitarfish” in Terrain magazine where they were published. Eric Magrane and Maria Johnson are part of the 6&6 project which aims to bring scientists and artists together to portray and understand the Sonoran Desert (this is my favorite type of collaboration). Interestingly, it seems both Magrane and Johnson have science and art experience – Magrane is a geography PhD candidate and writer, Johnson is a marine conservationist and illustrator.

Magrane and Johnson traveled on a shrimp trawling boat as part of their collaboration, gathering bycatch data (all caught species that are not the target species). Several poems and illustrations came out of the collaboration, including “Shame-faced crab” (published in Zocalo Magazine and easiest to find in a blog post on the 6 and 6 website), the two published in Terrain, and “Sonora Scorpionfish” published in Coordinates Society. 

These poems are addressed to the bycatch and are accompanied with detailed illustrations that use dots to imply shading and patterns. I feel as though Johnson deliberately chose this style though I am not familiar with her body of work. The beauty of the whole being made up of the sum of these tiny individual pinpricks (rather than flamboyant colors, fancy materials, or computer generated additions) seems to speak to the necessity of each individual species, each fish, of bycatch to the beauty of the oceans, but I could be reaching. These species are often of special concern, lending the poems the narrative tone of a conservationist from the get-go of the title, and the voice of the poem takes that voice quite seriously.

Each poem gives special attention to the species it dotes on and seems to address a specific fish found on the trawling boat: how it  got on the trawling ship, and a little bit of scientific information about it carefully hidden (in the description of its habit or habitat). Each poem also seems to philosophize about the species, utilizing its relationship with humanity (going so far as to anthropomorphize certain species) to make a point about it’s existence as a part of the bycatch. Each poem, by highlighting this ‘unwanted’ or ‘forgettable’ part of the day’s catch on the boat, draws attention to the uniqueness of the species. Magrane makes us feel for the loss of life of each fish through beautiful, short stanzas punctuated by an abundance of white space that creates a sense of breathlessness, a feeling perhaps like a fish out of water.

By far my favorite poem is “Sonora Scorpionfish”, which contains the following lines:

“what are the chances/ from thousands of eggs

one will grow to display/ your red pectoral fin

…

what are the chances/ a human will be drawn

 to your sharp appearance/ pick you up

  by instinct or chance/ and the next day

their arm will go numb/ all numb,

is that slight/ consolation?”

I recommend you check those lines out in the original (link provided again here) because Magrane’s use of white space and stanza breaks heightens the suspense and, again, makes you feel breathless and light-heated as you grieve for the loss of the fish, which is really amazing (and sad, all at once). This poem really inspires me – without drowning its reader in guilt or even anger, Magrane manages to draw out intense feelings of compassion for marine life. Magrane may have the poem directly converse with the

fish, but really he is opening the door for a philosophical conversation with his readers about the state of our marine life and the extreme loss of life in the environment that is the ‘bycatch’ of our industrial goals. Do we care? Is a numb arm consolation for the loss of the beautiful world we inhabit?

I would recommend these poems and illustrations to anyone who loves marine life or wants to experience the ongoing sad, deep, and beautiful conversation poets are having about conservation. I hope to see more of Magrane and Johnson’s collaboration in other journals soon.

I first came across this academic resource while working on one of my honors theses in undergrad – Science on Stage: An Examination of Scientific Rhetoric in Drama. This thesis really pushed me into reading (and writing) science-theater hybrids and was inspired, in part, by reading this book. And that’s what this book mostly does – it inspires one to consider science on stage as a cultural entity, even if the book can be considered a bit biased (more than I would generally recommend for an academic source). Then again, Shepherd-Barr is breaking some ground here by collecting a whole book of science-play criticism in one place and is very upfront about her definition of science, so perhaps its unfair to judge the book as anything other than a little lax on what is considered a culture-shaking play or actual science.

Shepherd-Barr covers a lot of science plays, from the modern and popular like Copenhagen by Michael Frayn to the old and unexpected like Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, with a lot of coverage in between. The book is a good jumping off point for thinking about how science functions in plays, what can be considered science, how scientists and the process of science are portrayed, and how these science plays impact our societal perceptions of science. The book is comprised of chapters that focus on plays of different themes – physics, medicine, biology, etc. – and Shepherd-Barr also tries to touch on trends, tradition, history, and the importance of theater to science in other chapters.

The book is an interesting read, if dense, but only for someone who is well-read in the science-theater genre (you won’t get much out of reading about plays you haven’t read). That being said, the book is a great starting place to look for plays that would be of interest to you as the appendix in the back is really helpful. I would recommend anyone interested in theater, or even writing plays that deal with science, pick up this book and delve into the world of science-theater hybrids.

A cautionary note: Dr. Carl Djerassi has a great article about this book and how it exaggerates the prevalence of science plays on stage, in part by having a somewhat loose definition of what a science play is. I would recommend reading his article – it’s important to recognize that Shepherd-Barr is casting a wide net, with many of the plays she mentions not having been performed frequently, if ever, and other plays featuring characters like Newton or Einstein but with no real science behind them at all.

I personally fall somewhere between Shepherd-Barr and Djerassi’s views on science-plays, not as harsh as Djerassi about the necessity of ‘real science’ to be the ultimate focus of the play but also not willing to say the barest hint of a scientist’s name qualifies a play as a science play (sorry, Darwin in Malibu). To me, each play that has a primary or secondary focus of science informs us about how our culture views science, and is thus a science play even if it doesn’t quite get around to teaching us the inner workings of a transmembrane protein. And how our culture views science is important – science cannot stand alone. So pick up this book to get a start on understanding the complexity of science plays – and make your own decision about what a science play is to you!

Katherine Larson’s Radial Symmetry is less about science than I expected, given that it was written by a research scientist and field ecologist. As a book of poetry, Larson’s imagery, clarity, and vividness is to be admired – there are moments of great beauty scattered throughout the book.

Unfortunately, Radial Symmetry wasn’t really the book for me; if you’re a reader who likes a cohesive narrative (or poems that feel connected), this collection will feel disjointed. Larson writes of her own experiences with loss, love, travel, and more, couching them in biological imagery (sometimes) but leaving us without any discernible threads to meaningfully connect these reflections. Within each of these reflections, there are certainly precise and beautiful moments of writing and insight; it should be noted that Larson pays particularly excellent attention to sound within her work. But much of the collection felt vague and too personal for me to understand. There were also a lot of noncommittally ‘thoughtful’ statements where Larson seemed to be attempting philosophy but fell short of dedicating herself to it – for example a catch-all, like “Either everything’s sublime or nothing is”.

This book of poems would work well for those who appreciate scientific reference without scientific exploration and who like to go on a personal journey with the author through a life not your own. Larson does offer a unique perspective on her human experience, particularly through poems about loss like Grandfather Outside. Readers who appreciate poetry collections in which there is a lot of variety and diversity in thought, imagery, and style will also appreciate this versatile collection.

Some of my favorite lines follow – from Statuary:

“But somewhere between/ the crane and the worm/ between the days I pass through/ and the days that pass/ through me/ is the mind…”

from Study for Love’s Body:

“Saturn revolves/ repeatedly around some distance/ where space is nothing/ yet still something that separates.”

from Love at Thirty-Two Degrees:

“Science-

beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone,/ every time I make love for love’s sake alone,

I betray you.”

I have a confession – I used to be an avid reader of romance. About five years ago, I worked as a reviewer for three blogs and also had my own personal blog where I held contests and centralized all my reviews. Unfortunately, college quickly forced me to re prioritize (homework? sleep? eating? pick two, and forget about the rest of life!). I was delighted when I heard about Celeste Bradley’s most recent regency romance novel, I Thee Wed, which came out in May of 2016 and features not one but two scientists! This was a book with relevance to this blog, if only in how we portray science in mass market paperback.

Orion Worthington is an aspiring scientist in 19th century England with lofty ambitions, working for Sir Geoffrey Blayne as a lab assistant. Hoping to put his family name behind him and advance into the upper echelons of science-society, the last thing he needs is his own personal scandal with Blayne’s niece, Italian scientist Francesca Penrose. Francesca and Orion both agree that their mutual desire is impacting their research goals and something must be done to remove the distraction that temptation provides. But will one night of passion be enough experimentation to last a lifetime? (As any good scientist knows, all experiments must be repeated many times over. So right from the get-go, I’m going to say… no).

This book has all the classic elements of a well written historical romance: there is a great cast of warm, eclectic supporting characters and a completely contrived plot that gets resolved miraculously at the end (literally. the answer here is ‘magic’) which could have been resolved with a simple conversation earlier on. There’s hot, passionate kisses and daydreaming and sex and no one can keep their hands off one another. The dialogue is humorous and both Francesca and Orion are compelling characters. If you’re into romance novels of the historical variety, I would recommend this book – on an A+ to F/Did Not Finish scale, this book would come in at a solid B-. Above average, if only slightly.

But what is compelling and unique about this book is its relationship with science, particularly in that it seems to reflect an incorrect, but socially popular, view of science. The book’s major scientific discovery comes as a singular epiphany and one night of work by Orion, alone in a lab; that discovery is then presented to the scientific community about 16-24 hours later at a conference. In reality, science can involve epiphanies (though they generally need extensive tweaking) – but even in the 1800s, experiments had to be rigorously repeated. Science is slow; having the epiphany does not guarantee you’ll have figured it out the first time around or that your experiment will run without issue (actually, when does that ever happen?). And after getting your experiment to run, repetition and independent verification are required before bringing forth the results to the community (though today that process is more rigorous than in the 1800s, I’m sure).

Additionally, Orion is never seen doing research for his experiments in that he looks at no other literature. Science often requires us to stop and consult the work of others; it is not the work of a mad genius, alone in his lab, but of a collective mind, thriving. To someone not involved in science, I wonder if Bradley’s interpretation of scientists as lone geniuses with perfect epiphanies and perfect results after one night of work would seem odd (the way it did to me) or if this is, truly, the way modern society still understands the process and people of science.

Overall, the book remains light on discussions of scientific theory, touching briefly and vaguely on Lamarck and evolutionary theory, even as the process of science frames the overall plot. Charles ‘Charlie’ Darwin makes an appearance, which I found really humorous. I would even go so far as to say Bradley was daring in portraying a child-like Darwin, this serious scientific figure whose theory changed the course of biology, as a mildly asthmatic, whining troublemaker. This exchange in the epilogue particularly amused me:

“You’re older than Charlie,” he reminded her. “You should have kept him out of the deepest water.”

Attie was clearly offended. “I’m helping him. He needs to get more fit if he is to survive.”

Overdone? Perhaps. But just the kind of light-hearted, dramatic humor to end this kind of book.