Anatomic

(Paperback)

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The poems of Anatomic have emerged from biomonitoring and microbiome testing on the author's body to examine the way the outside writes the inside, whether we like it or not. Adam Dickinson drew blood, collected urine, swabbed bacteria, and tested his feces to measure the precise chemical and microbial diversity of his body. To his horror, he discovered that our "petroculture" has infiltrated our very bodies with pesticides, flame retardants, and other substances. He discovered shifting communities of microbes that reflect his dependence on the sugar, salt, and fat of the Western diet, and he discovered how we rely on nonhuman organisms to make us human, to regulate our moods and personalities.
Structured like the hormones some of these synthetic chemicals mimic in our bodies, this sequence of poems links the author's biographical details (diet, lifestyle, geography) with historical details (spills, poisonings, military applications) to show how permeable our bodies are to the environment. As Dickinson becomes obsessed with limiting the rampant contamination of his own biochemistry, he turns this chemical-microbial autobiography into an anxious plea for us to consider what we're doing to our world -- and to our own bodies.

Reviews

"Adam Dickinson mixes poetry with science in a way that makes us wonder why the two aren't combined more often."
--Contemporary Verse 2

"Adam Dickinson is a wild doctor and a Romantic scientist. With actual blood, sweat, and tears he has written an essential Anatomic poetics." -- Peter Gizzi

"Adam Dickinson doubles down on poetry's tendency toward interiority as he takes the concerns of the poem all the way down to the cellular level. This is a book about the body's intimacies, its toxicities, about the histories that it carries within it. It's a book of lyric and a book of meaningful despair." -- Juliana Spahr

Author Bio

Adam Dickinson has published three books of poetry. His most recent book, The Polymers, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Poetry.