The Universe Project by Diane Allerdyce, Andrea Best, Gene Martel, and Jeff Morgan

$24.99

In The Universe Project, four poets mine the space of the literal universe for metaphors of personal existence and social relationships. Gene Martel uses the villanelle to question the formal structures found in the worlds his poems inhabit. “They say that there’s a schemer scheming schemes./ I say that they are dreamers dreaming dreams.” Andrea Best’s explores how human bodies are universes unto themselves. She “imagines their particles,/ synchronized swimmers in distant waters” searching for “this new language” that “folds space and time over/ where the two of us touch/ momentarily.” Jeff Morgan turns his scope in “A Universe of Corn” where “Believing the corn to be the imperialist, /the celestial travelers gathered some maize/and began negotiations for earth’s surrender./ The corn would not negotiate.” One hopes that if there’s intelligent life in the universe, it has a sense of humor. In “Missing” by Diane Allerdyce, she questions the place of the lover without love: “When love shuts its lids against us to seal/ off the light, we’ll be drifting alone. Gone/ the final chance to return to the base/ of commitment to which we once were tied.” Readers will read these poems as universes in themselves, lucky to have these poets as guides.

–Brad Johnson, author of The Happiness Theory and Smuggling Elephants Through Airport Security

Whether Blake’s grain of sand, the carnival funhouse, or Webb’s hi-def cosmic clouds, whichever mirror you look into delivers an image filtered through its peculiarities. Stargazing can be a daring act. It squeezes us down to our appropriate size, and from that perspective, it can liberate us from the mundane to the mystical. In The Universe Project, its authors stare into the mirror of the cosmos and reflect back to us a probing, dimensional, and deeply satisfying archive of their collective exploration.

–David Gonzalez, poet, playwright, musician, public speaker, recipient of the NJ Governor’s Arts Award for Distinguished Service in the Arts, author of six books of poetry (most recently Soundings), and performer in many touring projects, including the multi-media show The Effects of Gravity.

What would happen if science transformed the core of the poet’s toolbox? How might we see ourselves if embrace of the natural world were the first priority? What image of the universe would emerge if each word of a poem were linked to a star? These are among the questions stirring in a cell of four like-minded poets who took on the generation of new work inspired by scientific data. They dug deep and wide. They scanned the skies. They allowed what they know to be abridged by another realm of knowing, and have shared their illuminating discoveries in The Universe Project. It is a restless collection, pulsing with what is beyond, what is underneath, what is looming before us even when our eyes are closed.

These poems speak wonder. They quell trepidation. They derive order in lost places. They soothe the spirit. Above all, they encourage each of us to lay claim to our own vision of the beyond, using whatever means we can. To assist in that process, they have assembled an array of galactic visual illustrations, prompting us further and further into the space of reflection and wonderment. Using a variety of literary forms, these four poets have produced a dazzling compilation of poems centered in turn on creation, the sun, planets and satellites, stretching the very substance of consciousness.

Here is “a new pattern crocheted into/ the cosmic fabric” (Best.) Here “emergent psyche drifts across the skies” (Martel.) Here is “the silken net the moon has cast” (Allerdyce.) And here “we go beyond experience, into space” (Morgan.) These are prophetic poems, exploring what is possible. Enjoy the journey!

–Carol Barrett, author of Drawing Lessons, Calling in the Bones, Pansies, and Reading Wind

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The Universe Project

by Diane Allerdyce, Andrea Best, Gene Martel, and Jeff Morgan

Full-length, Paper, Color

979-8-89990-260-4

2025

The Universe Project uses four distinct poetic voices to explore the cosmos and bring down-to-earth truth back from space. Interspersed with stunning imagery of celestial bodies, the book is the result of four friends inspired to write on a single topic over a long period of time. This collection of poems traversing planets and particles, suns and moons, life’s cyclical nature, and the infinite and the immediate helps us better understand ourselves, our world, and our lives. #poetry #universe #space #creation #stars #life

Diane Allerdyce is a poet, professor, parent, partner, grandmother, amateur musician, yogi, and caregiver for whom poetry is balm for the soul. Her poem “Ruellia Brittoniana: Desire” appears in the February 7, 2024, issue of TheGroundUp at https://www.thegrounduppublication.com/post/ruellia-brittoniana-desire

“Sitting with my Mother at the Lake at Sunset [Contextualizing Poetry for the Helping Professions]” appeared in Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping 27.2 (2021).

Diane’s creative publications also include a chapbook, Whatever It Is I was Giving Up (Pudding House, 2007), and an eclectic collection of prose and poetry entitled House of Aching Beauty (EditionsPerleDesAntilles, 2012). Her story “The Gift” appeared in the North American Review (Fall 2019: 304.4): 43-50). (It was inspired, in part, by Wallace Stegner’s “Goin’ to Town”; an interview about her process appears at https://northamericanreview.org/open-space/conversation-diane-allerdyce-discusses-her-story-gift-her-partner-rory-spearing ). Diane’s short story “Kochma” appeared in Stories that Need to be Told 2022: A TulipTree Anthology; it was also first-place winner in the UK-based National Association of Writers and Groups (NAWG)’s 2022 Open Competition for Fiction and was republished with permission in their 2022 Anthology of Award-Winning Writing.

Andrea Best is a Certified Deep Transformational Coach who partners with individuals embarking on a transformational journey in support of their self-actualization, creativity, and societal impact. Her career spans both academic and corporate worlds, while her passion for deeper understanding and poetic inspiration expands even further to encompass the infinite and infinitely mysterious Universe.

Her poems have appeared in literary journals Chiron Review, Florida English, Slipstream, and Quest, and in Kiss &Tell: Storied of Love, Lies, and Lust Vol. 1, which was released as an audiobook.

Best completed her Ph.D. at Florida Atlantic University in the Public Intellectuals track of the Comparative Studies program with a concentration in Environment, Technology, and Society, where her research focused on sustainability narratives, the communities of meaning that define them, and their effects on public policy. She also holds a MFA in Creative Writing from University of Miami and a BA in English from Lynn University.

Best resides in Kingston, NY with her spouse, Madrid-born guitarist-composer-producer Álvaro Domene, who often joins Andrea during live stage performances of her work around the Hudson Valley.

Gene Martel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1930. Embracing a restless spirit, he traveled the world geographically and metaphysically until his death in September 2017, at various times experiencing life as a sailor, student, drill sergeant, consultant, corporate manager, professor, poet, husband, friend, and father of Chloe. Considered to have been a genius by many, he died of Lewy Body Dementia on September 10, 2017, leaving behind over fifty individual poems published in journals and a definitive collection of his poetry entitled Bones, published posthumously in 2018.

Jeff Morgan has a chapbook, Poems Inspired by the Parts of Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory that I Really Don’t Understand, forthcoming from Mellen. Individual poems of his have most recently appeared in Grist and Abandoned Mine. Morgan is also the author of three books of literary criticism, most recently The (Un)Welcome Stranger: Intercultural Sensitivity in Six American Novels (McFarland, 2023), and edited a new edition of Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs. He is also the author of many scholarly essays, his work appearing in such journals as ANQ, Frontiers, and War, Literature, and the Arts. A recently retired educator after 42 years in the classroom, Morgan lives in Boynton Beach, Florida with his wife, Dana.

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