Backyard Darwin by Paul Stroble

“With Backyard Darwin, Paul Stroble reinvigorates the haiku sequence and how we look at natural science. This work makes human the study of the natural world; these poems bring us closer to naturalists of history and our own vision of how everything operates.  Who could have guessed that haiku is a form that would serve this subject so well?  Paul Stroble makes the stuff of dry textbooks come alive with his vivid language and loyalty, not slavery, to form.  These poems possess a sly theology and a sharp-eyed science that complement each other and serve other ways of knowing as well.  I shall read this work over and over again for the sheer pleasure of its language, insight, scientific history, and joy.”

–Tom Dukes, Professor emeritus, University of Akron

Paul Stroble shares a pleasant afternoon’s thoughtful musing on a wonderland more amazing than Carroll’s, more amazing because it is true and demonstrable. Charles Darwin, his mentors and supporters, and even a foe emerge in this chronicle as richly complex discoverers of deep time and the powerful mechanisms that shape our world. Stroble tells a very human story too as he weighs the implications of their insights for our sense of who we are in the world. Yet it is also a playful story that unfolds remarkably through an accumulation of haikus which capture these profound concepts as a series of pithy insights that resonate together.  In this way, he has shared the fun he had with his reading and thinking on these important topics.

–Kim Kleinman, Webster University and Missouri Botanical Garden Research Associate