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The Robot Scientist's Daughter
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2015)Dazzling in its descriptions of a natural world imperiled by the hidden dangers of our nuclear past, this book presents a girl in search of the secrets of survival. In The Robot Scientist's Daughter, Jeannine Hall Gailey creates for us a world of radioactive wasps, cesium in the sunflowers, and robotic daughters. She conjures the intricate menace of the nuclear family and nuclear history, juxtaposing surreal cyborgs and mad scientists from fifties horror flicks with languid scenes of rural childhood. Mining her experience growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the writer allows the stories of the creation of the first atomic bomb, the unintended consequences of scientific discovery, and building nests for birds in the crooks of maple trees to weave together a reality at once terrifying and beautiful. The Robot Scientist’s Daughter reveals the underside of the Manhattan Project from a personal angle, and charts a woman’s – and America’s - journey towards reinvention.
- GenresPoetryScience Fiction
82 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2015
3 people are currently reading
1095 people want to read
About the author
Jeannine Hall Gailey
21 books144 followersJeannine Hall Gailey is a poet with Multiple Sclerosis who served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of six books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006,) She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011,) Unexplained Fevers (New Binary Press, 2013) The Robot Scientist's Daughter (Mayapple Press, 2015), the winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and the SFPA's Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World, and the upcoming from BOA Editions, Flare, Corona. She's also written a guide to marketing for poets, PR for Poets. Her poems were featured on NPR's The Writer's Almanac and Verse Daily, and included in 2007's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Her work has appeared in journals like The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The American Poetry Review, and Poetry. She has an MA in English from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Pacific University.
Jeannine also writes book reviews which have appeared in The Rumpus, American Book Review, Calyx, The Pedestal Magazine, and The Cincinnati Review.
She has written technical articles and published a book on early web services technology with Microsoft Press in 2004.
Jeannine also writes book reviews which have appeared in The Rumpus, American Book Review, Calyx, The Pedestal Magazine, and The Cincinnati Review.
She has written technical articles and published a book on early web services technology with Microsoft Press in 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
February 14, 2016
It's an important collection about her childhood within spitting distance of the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. It's full of courage to examine the things the author lived as a child and admit/recognize that much of it is responsible for her current health issues.
This book has been nominated for the 2016 Elgin Award for best speculative poetry collection. See sfpoetry.com
I have reviewed this collection in full for Star*Line: http://sfpoetry.com/sl/reviews/15revi...
And an expanded version with full poems in audio for Amazing Stories: http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2015/05/...
This book has been nominated for the 2016 Elgin Award for best speculative poetry collection. See sfpoetry.com
I have reviewed this collection in full for Star*Line: http://sfpoetry.com/sl/reviews/15revi...
And an expanded version with full poems in audio for Amazing Stories: http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2015/05/...
May 1, 2015
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter by Jeannine Hall Gailey, which will be on tour with Poetic Book Tours this month, is a collection that blends invention with a cautionary tale. Imaginary friends and close connections we make as children often help fill in the holes we have because of our own family dynamics, and the robot scientist and his daughter are no different. While the scientist experiments for the pure joy of discovery, the consequences of his actions often take a backseat even if those consequences are widely devastating. In the author’s note, Gailey says, “One reason I wrote this book was to raise awareness that nuclear research is never harmless; that the half-life of the pollution from nuclear sites is longer than most human lifespans; that there is, from reading my father’s research as well as my college classes, no truly safe way to store nuclear waste.” (pg. 6)
These poems will definitely make you think deeper about nuclear research and the effects of not only disposing of waste, but also the impact of atomic bombs and nuclear meltdowns. Some of Gailey’s signature references to comic book characters and myths are present in these poems if you know where to look, like Dr. Manhattan who found himself transformed by an accident in a lab — an accident that resembles one caused by physicist Louis Slotin — and his modified outlook on humanity, which resembles the attacks of conscience felt by Oppenheimer. While there are references to the Manhattan nuclear project, the bulk of the collection focuses on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2015/04/t...
These poems will definitely make you think deeper about nuclear research and the effects of not only disposing of waste, but also the impact of atomic bombs and nuclear meltdowns. Some of Gailey’s signature references to comic book characters and myths are present in these poems if you know where to look, like Dr. Manhattan who found himself transformed by an accident in a lab — an accident that resembles one caused by physicist Louis Slotin — and his modified outlook on humanity, which resembles the attacks of conscience felt by Oppenheimer. While there are references to the Manhattan nuclear project, the bulk of the collection focuses on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2015/04/t...
May 17, 2015
When I was asked by Serena Agusto-Cox to review this poetry book for Poetic Book Tours, I did not think twice. I had read and reviewed Becoming the Villainess way back in 2009. I liked what Jeannine Hall Gailey had penned in that.
Coming back to The Robot Scientist's Daughter, I liked the title. When I read the introduction by the poet, I was hooked to the poems. I could relate to the scientific stuff mentioned in the poems. My dad used to talk Physics to us during meal times. He explained the complicated scientific stuff in a very simplified manner. Theoretical physics still is part of my life.
I have done my Masters in Inorganic Chemistry. When Gailey writes about various Elements and their properties and mentions Geiger–Müller counter, I know exactly what she is speaking about.
These poems speak to me, reach out to me. When we say Nuclear, everyone thinks Nuclear bombs, Nuclear wars. No one thinks of the nuclear debris, which is more devastating then the bombs and wars. Why? Because it kills slowly, and spreads over generations.
Gailey has personalized the poems and that connects to the heart. I paused at times, reflecting on the words, was saddened too, now and then. Rural childhood is mixed with straight laced scientists, consequences of our mindless nuclear experimentation. To what effect? Destruction in one way or the other.
Each of the poems that talks of The Robot Scientist's Daughter, in one way or the other, fills us with poignancy, helplessness and stoic acceptance. I find poetry books hard to review but this one was easy for me despite being on a difficult topic of science, which most don't relate to.
Coming back to The Robot Scientist's Daughter, I liked the title. When I read the introduction by the poet, I was hooked to the poems. I could relate to the scientific stuff mentioned in the poems. My dad used to talk Physics to us during meal times. He explained the complicated scientific stuff in a very simplified manner. Theoretical physics still is part of my life.
I have done my Masters in Inorganic Chemistry. When Gailey writes about various Elements and their properties and mentions Geiger–Müller counter, I know exactly what she is speaking about.
These poems speak to me, reach out to me. When we say Nuclear, everyone thinks Nuclear bombs, Nuclear wars. No one thinks of the nuclear debris, which is more devastating then the bombs and wars. Why? Because it kills slowly, and spreads over generations.
Gailey has personalized the poems and that connects to the heart. I paused at times, reflecting on the words, was saddened too, now and then. Rural childhood is mixed with straight laced scientists, consequences of our mindless nuclear experimentation. To what effect? Destruction in one way or the other.
Each of the poems that talks of The Robot Scientist's Daughter, in one way or the other, fills us with poignancy, helplessness and stoic acceptance. I find poetry books hard to review but this one was easy for me despite being on a difficult topic of science, which most don't relate to.
April 13, 2015
There is no one who could have written these poems with greater authority. I have no greater compliment: I wished I had written some of these myself.
March 10, 2015
Review to come
December 12, 2015
A stunning collection by a gifted poet, a poet who I will most definitely be reading more of in the future. Highly recommended.
February 14, 2015
Jeannine Hall Gailey's fourth full-length collection of poetry, The Robot Scientist's Daughter, is a part coming-of-age exploration of the poet's life growing up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, part critical look at nuclear history in America. It's a departure from Gailey's previous collections, which often convey retellings of traditional fairy tales and stories of women in popular culture. Yet, fans of Gailey's work will be happy to see that her exploration of the fantastic has not disappeared in her newest book, as she travels back in time to use both personal narratives and segments of American history to explore our love/hate relationship with nuclear power.
Gailey opens her collection with an author's note explaning some autobiographical material, and thus, the genesis of the book. The Robot Scientist's Daughter, who waves her way in and out of this collection is fictional in some aspects, but as Gailey notes, she "also shares many charactertisitcs with me." Many of the Robot Scientist Daughter's poems display surreal elements, helping to explain her role in this Nuclear World. For instance, in one poem, she is a medical wonder with "nails made of plastic and paper mache" and "one kidney curled inside her ribs, her blood trying/to escape." In another poem, she explores the image of the woman in popular culture nuclear films: "The robot scientist's daughter must be there/to humanize the robot scientist; he is both a protagonist/we identify with and a villain we know must fail." In yet another poem, we see the Robot Scientist's daughter journey west, away from her childhood home: "She's a bit of an alien here in the land/of tanned legs and blonde hair, beaches/and bongo drums."
Still, many poems leave this surreal world behind in more concrete, narrative writing. In one poem, "The Taste of Rust in August" the narrator, as she licks "lampposts, iron grates, jewelry" for the rust flavor, laments her own complexion, which is "dull and transparent as wax paper." In another poem, "Death by Drowning" she recounts an incident where she almost drowns: "I cannot float/merely thrash six feet underwater. If only I was a smooth/sleek sale, a dolphin, a mermaid, if ony vestigial gills/might open." In yet another poem, "The Girls Next Door" the narrator describes her neighbors who taught her how "to curl her bangs," "put on lipstick," and "tuck a rose" behind her ear. Oak Ridge also becomes its own character in several poems including "Oak Ridge, Tennessee" where the poet describes a world tht is "Always things hovering over us -- mountains, thunderstorms/a poisoned valley. Lightning bouncing across the yard/Bees swarming a horse. My father strode off to work/with government-issue TLD cards and a black suit/How much radiation today?/The card would tell him, but he knew it lied."
Finally, infused throughout the book are glimpses of America's relationship with the nuclear power. One poem looks at the role women played in 1945 secret city, while another poem references Dr. Manhattan, a comic book character from The Watchmen. More current history is also included, with many poems alluding to the devastation surrounding Fukushima. Even the mysterious Roswell, New Mexico, makes an appearance in this collection!
Gailey opens her collection with an author's note explaning some autobiographical material, and thus, the genesis of the book. The Robot Scientist's Daughter, who waves her way in and out of this collection is fictional in some aspects, but as Gailey notes, she "also shares many charactertisitcs with me." Many of the Robot Scientist Daughter's poems display surreal elements, helping to explain her role in this Nuclear World. For instance, in one poem, she is a medical wonder with "nails made of plastic and paper mache" and "one kidney curled inside her ribs, her blood trying/to escape." In another poem, she explores the image of the woman in popular culture nuclear films: "The robot scientist's daughter must be there/to humanize the robot scientist; he is both a protagonist/we identify with and a villain we know must fail." In yet another poem, we see the Robot Scientist's daughter journey west, away from her childhood home: "She's a bit of an alien here in the land/of tanned legs and blonde hair, beaches/and bongo drums."
Still, many poems leave this surreal world behind in more concrete, narrative writing. In one poem, "The Taste of Rust in August" the narrator, as she licks "lampposts, iron grates, jewelry" for the rust flavor, laments her own complexion, which is "dull and transparent as wax paper." In another poem, "Death by Drowning" she recounts an incident where she almost drowns: "I cannot float/merely thrash six feet underwater. If only I was a smooth/sleek sale, a dolphin, a mermaid, if ony vestigial gills/might open." In yet another poem, "The Girls Next Door" the narrator describes her neighbors who taught her how "to curl her bangs," "put on lipstick," and "tuck a rose" behind her ear. Oak Ridge also becomes its own character in several poems including "Oak Ridge, Tennessee" where the poet describes a world tht is "Always things hovering over us -- mountains, thunderstorms/a poisoned valley. Lightning bouncing across the yard/Bees swarming a horse. My father strode off to work/with government-issue TLD cards and a black suit/How much radiation today?/The card would tell him, but he knew it lied."
Finally, infused throughout the book are glimpses of America's relationship with the nuclear power. One poem looks at the role women played in 1945 secret city, while another poem references Dr. Manhattan, a comic book character from The Watchmen. More current history is also included, with many poems alluding to the devastation surrounding Fukushima. Even the mysterious Roswell, New Mexico, makes an appearance in this collection!
January 9, 2016
Many of the poems in this book are iterations of the poet's own life. Jeannine Hall Gailey spent her childhood in Tennessee, in the shadow of her father's workplace, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, incubator and nursery to nuclear experiments that included the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The neighborhood where she grew up has since been razed and paved over, but the poet recalls the way the old perils affected the child and the woman.
Like other children, she was taught not to eat poisonous plants - lily of the valley, hemlock -
But she didn't learn that the swallow's nest,
the frog, the mud-dauber wasp nest, the milk from cows,
the white-tailed deer, the catfish were full of hot particles.
Her father brought out the Geiger counter to measure
her snowmen and teach her the snow, too, wasn't
safe enough to taste.
As a child,
She knows the click of the Geiger counter
better than her own heart, which moans
and swings unlike any machine.
Her father's Geiger counter click-clicked
its swaying tongue at me.
Her mother worries that she is becoming morbid:
... the girl hides underground, pretending
to be a troll or a witch, She puts leaves in her hair
and collects fossils, lining them up to spell words,
the swirling trilobite, the imprints of the mysterious dead.
As an adult, she tells of the aftermath of nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima, where "Sunflowers planted in hope, in the name of the dead / fail to purify the earth... Still, they are tended." Ordinary landscapes become shifted and exotic with "blue glass butterflies born eyeless," and where "metal faces of new radiation detection signs / appear next to the crumpled worn idols of stone."
These stone idols may turn our thoughts to Shelley's "Ozymandias." "Tickling the Dragon" evokes W. H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts." "About suffering they were never wrong," says Auden, showing us Breughel's painting of Icarus falling into the sea: a cosmic catastrophe that is virtually ignored by the townspeople.
Gailey replaces the Auden's "Old Masters" with "old comics," showing us a comic, line-drawing of a very real and catastrophic accident involving a scientist whose hubris caused him to use a screwdriver in an experiment with deadly beryllium and plutonium. His gruesome death by radiation, like the bravado of Icarus, is now an everyday accommodation to reality: man can not, unaided, touch the sky, or the atom: "After this, they began to use robots; / they wanted to find a way to keep a man's hands / from touching the demon core of this dragon." Either way, however, the small and invisible can be humanity's undoing.
These poems are funny and matter-of -fact, filled with imagery and plain, down-to-earth and science-fictional. They are both haunting and interesting. I am very glad to have been given the opportunity to discover them.
Thank you to Serena Agusto-Cox of Poetic Book Tours and Savvy Verse and Wit for inviting me to participate in the blog tour for The Robot Scientist's Daughter.
Like other children, she was taught not to eat poisonous plants - lily of the valley, hemlock -
But she didn't learn that the swallow's nest,
the frog, the mud-dauber wasp nest, the milk from cows,
the white-tailed deer, the catfish were full of hot particles.
Her father brought out the Geiger counter to measure
her snowmen and teach her the snow, too, wasn't
safe enough to taste.
As a child,
She knows the click of the Geiger counter
better than her own heart, which moans
and swings unlike any machine.
Her father's Geiger counter click-clicked
its swaying tongue at me.
Her mother worries that she is becoming morbid:
... the girl hides underground, pretending
to be a troll or a witch, She puts leaves in her hair
and collects fossils, lining them up to spell words,
the swirling trilobite, the imprints of the mysterious dead.
As an adult, she tells of the aftermath of nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima, where "Sunflowers planted in hope, in the name of the dead / fail to purify the earth... Still, they are tended." Ordinary landscapes become shifted and exotic with "blue glass butterflies born eyeless," and where "metal faces of new radiation detection signs / appear next to the crumpled worn idols of stone."
These stone idols may turn our thoughts to Shelley's "Ozymandias." "Tickling the Dragon" evokes W. H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts." "About suffering they were never wrong," says Auden, showing us Breughel's painting of Icarus falling into the sea: a cosmic catastrophe that is virtually ignored by the townspeople.
Gailey replaces the Auden's "Old Masters" with "old comics," showing us a comic, line-drawing of a very real and catastrophic accident involving a scientist whose hubris caused him to use a screwdriver in an experiment with deadly beryllium and plutonium. His gruesome death by radiation, like the bravado of Icarus, is now an everyday accommodation to reality: man can not, unaided, touch the sky, or the atom: "After this, they began to use robots; / they wanted to find a way to keep a man's hands / from touching the demon core of this dragon." Either way, however, the small and invisible can be humanity's undoing.
These poems are funny and matter-of -fact, filled with imagery and plain, down-to-earth and science-fictional. They are both haunting and interesting. I am very glad to have been given the opportunity to discover them.
Thank you to Serena Agusto-Cox of Poetic Book Tours and Savvy Verse and Wit for inviting me to participate in the blog tour for The Robot Scientist's Daughter.
May 27, 2015
Originally posted at Peeking Between the Pages: http://www.peekingbetweenthepages.com...
The Robot Scientist’s Daughterrobot by Jeannine Hall Gailey is a collection of poems that are quite powerful. While my initial attraction to the collection was the title and beautiful book cover, it soon became apparent that these poems run so much deeper than that. The collection reflects on the author’s own childhood growing up near the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee where nuclear experiments were conducted and the effects that this had on her growing up and years later on her health as an adult.
The poems are so full of imagery and I thought sadness. Sadness in growing up as a kid and not knowing that doing something as simple as chewing on a blade of grass or tasting snow could be so bad for you. As you read her words you can almost feel the radiation and sickness closing in on you; the unfairness of it all. Yet there is hope in the the water lilies that bloom and the sunflowers that are planted and in just being a kid. It was interesting to see both sides of the coin – the goodness and beauty in the world around you and yet the devastation in how easily it can all crumble.
As always I am no expert when it comes to poetry but I enjoyed this collection and hope to read more from this author. The poems reflect real life mixed with science fiction mixed with the devastating effects of the nuclear world. These poems continue to haunt me and I don’t think I’ll soon forget them. I’ll leave you with a piece I found particularly powerful… not to mention the author’s poetry shows her amazing talent much better than I could ever put into words.
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter (recumbent)
She lies back on a floor of pine needles looking up at a sky
obscured by crooked branches. But she can’t be back-
this must be a memory, tricking her, her hands on the damp
violets and moss, the sharp shells of acorns a mirage.
If she could, she would once again be part of this wood,
her own cells the building blocks of the next flower,
the next kit fox. Trace elements still exist inside her
that call her to this place, the skeleton of decayed leaves
a reminder that her own skeleton, marrow emptied out,
might emit the same markers, might show
the exact same chemical makeup. When she was young
there were so many daffodils, she could not pick them all-
she ran her hands along their frilled faces, she placed
her face in their clusters and smiled, covered in yellow
pollen. Even the glue of their stems on her hands smelled
like sunshine. One more trick. She lies back,
and remembers perennials that no longer exist.
She will not die here in concrete. Her body belongs there,
in a flower-field tilled under, waiting, vast and empty,
for her to return.
The Robot Scientist’s Daughterrobot by Jeannine Hall Gailey is a collection of poems that are quite powerful. While my initial attraction to the collection was the title and beautiful book cover, it soon became apparent that these poems run so much deeper than that. The collection reflects on the author’s own childhood growing up near the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee where nuclear experiments were conducted and the effects that this had on her growing up and years later on her health as an adult.
The poems are so full of imagery and I thought sadness. Sadness in growing up as a kid and not knowing that doing something as simple as chewing on a blade of grass or tasting snow could be so bad for you. As you read her words you can almost feel the radiation and sickness closing in on you; the unfairness of it all. Yet there is hope in the the water lilies that bloom and the sunflowers that are planted and in just being a kid. It was interesting to see both sides of the coin – the goodness and beauty in the world around you and yet the devastation in how easily it can all crumble.
As always I am no expert when it comes to poetry but I enjoyed this collection and hope to read more from this author. The poems reflect real life mixed with science fiction mixed with the devastating effects of the nuclear world. These poems continue to haunt me and I don’t think I’ll soon forget them. I’ll leave you with a piece I found particularly powerful… not to mention the author’s poetry shows her amazing talent much better than I could ever put into words.
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter (recumbent)
She lies back on a floor of pine needles looking up at a sky
obscured by crooked branches. But she can’t be back-
this must be a memory, tricking her, her hands on the damp
violets and moss, the sharp shells of acorns a mirage.
If she could, she would once again be part of this wood,
her own cells the building blocks of the next flower,
the next kit fox. Trace elements still exist inside her
that call her to this place, the skeleton of decayed leaves
a reminder that her own skeleton, marrow emptied out,
might emit the same markers, might show
the exact same chemical makeup. When she was young
there were so many daffodils, she could not pick them all-
she ran her hands along their frilled faces, she placed
her face in their clusters and smiled, covered in yellow
pollen. Even the glue of their stems on her hands smelled
like sunshine. One more trick. She lies back,
and remembers perennials that no longer exist.
She will not die here in concrete. Her body belongs there,
in a flower-field tilled under, waiting, vast and empty,
for her to return.
February 14, 2015
It's hard to resist a book with the title The Robot Scientist's Daughter. Those four words send the mind in a myriad of directions. Is this science fiction? A child's tale? A woman's story? A cousin of Frankenstein? And the answer would be, 'yes, it is, and more. Genre be damned.'
The story unfolds via poetry, little glimpses of life pressed to each page like butterflies pinned to a board. And, like life, it can't all be told at once, nor in order, and not always in the same mood. Just like life, days can be peaceful and beautiful, though burdened by the price that must be paid. Other times, the nightmares are close to the surface, and not always hidden behind sleeping eyes. It's complicated to be the Robot Scientist's Daughter.
She lives amongst the clutter and ruins of a Project called Manhattan, quite literally a notable hot spot. Atomic bombs, nuclear reactors, softly dying plants and animals (and people), weapons grade uranium, idyllic meadows, these are the puzzle pieces that make up the landscape of her childhood. It's where she grew up, learning, as children do, about their surroundings. She knows the birds and the strawberries and is a true child of nature, such as it is. Her realities are our nightmares, and her dreams are our history.
I wavered as she charmed, terrified, soothed and disturbed me. I often stopped to stare at the palm of my right hand—the same hand that, as a child, I would cup to hold a large blob of mercury and roll it around, watching how pretty it was as it sparkled and undulated, before easing it back into the little tube I would carry around in my pocket.
My hand looks smooth and healthy, after all these years. I can't help but feel a kinship with the Robot Scientist's Daughter. We are survivors, we are the products of our time, and we are strong and clever, knowledgeable in the ways of unnatural nature. We survived in the worst of times, how can we do anything but thrive in the best of times?
The story unfolds via poetry, little glimpses of life pressed to each page like butterflies pinned to a board. And, like life, it can't all be told at once, nor in order, and not always in the same mood. Just like life, days can be peaceful and beautiful, though burdened by the price that must be paid. Other times, the nightmares are close to the surface, and not always hidden behind sleeping eyes. It's complicated to be the Robot Scientist's Daughter.
She lives amongst the clutter and ruins of a Project called Manhattan, quite literally a notable hot spot. Atomic bombs, nuclear reactors, softly dying plants and animals (and people), weapons grade uranium, idyllic meadows, these are the puzzle pieces that make up the landscape of her childhood. It's where she grew up, learning, as children do, about their surroundings. She knows the birds and the strawberries and is a true child of nature, such as it is. Her realities are our nightmares, and her dreams are our history.
I wavered as she charmed, terrified, soothed and disturbed me. I often stopped to stare at the palm of my right hand—the same hand that, as a child, I would cup to hold a large blob of mercury and roll it around, watching how pretty it was as it sparkled and undulated, before easing it back into the little tube I would carry around in my pocket.
My hand looks smooth and healthy, after all these years. I can't help but feel a kinship with the Robot Scientist's Daughter. We are survivors, we are the products of our time, and we are strong and clever, knowledgeable in the ways of unnatural nature. We survived in the worst of times, how can we do anything but thrive in the best of times?
May 15, 2015
Review written for and published by Portland Book Review on May 14th:
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is a poetry book for the non-traditionalists. Borrowing from her life experiences growing up in Tennessee just a few miles away from Oak Ridge National Laboratories, author Jeannine Hall Gailey crafts a narrative about a young girl growing up in a land that poisoned the very food she ate. A slightly unsettling narrative unfolds with the beauty and wonder of nature polluted down to the subatomic level, and its insidious if unintentional effects on the girl and her childhood.
The poems in the book are realistic, but with a touch of science fiction. In some poems the girl is herself a robot her father created, or a cyborg due to the detrimental effects of the nuclear radiation falling upon her during her formative years. The language is both simple, everyday language, while also including jargon more common to the scientific community and technical papers. Even so, Jeannine manages to make the poems both smart and accessible to the layman. The poetry itself is written in free verse, there is no obvious rhyme scheme holding the stanzas together. Instead, there is often a rhythm buried within the lines, which while uneven, is part of the charm.
The poems in this book are biographical, but with just the right degree of science fiction to entice a different readership. A hauntingly beautiful and somewhat melancholy collection, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is the perfect book for the poetry enthusiast with an interest in science, and its potential side effects.
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is a poetry book for the non-traditionalists. Borrowing from her life experiences growing up in Tennessee just a few miles away from Oak Ridge National Laboratories, author Jeannine Hall Gailey crafts a narrative about a young girl growing up in a land that poisoned the very food she ate. A slightly unsettling narrative unfolds with the beauty and wonder of nature polluted down to the subatomic level, and its insidious if unintentional effects on the girl and her childhood.
The poems in the book are realistic, but with a touch of science fiction. In some poems the girl is herself a robot her father created, or a cyborg due to the detrimental effects of the nuclear radiation falling upon her during her formative years. The language is both simple, everyday language, while also including jargon more common to the scientific community and technical papers. Even so, Jeannine manages to make the poems both smart and accessible to the layman. The poetry itself is written in free verse, there is no obvious rhyme scheme holding the stanzas together. Instead, there is often a rhythm buried within the lines, which while uneven, is part of the charm.
The poems in this book are biographical, but with just the right degree of science fiction to entice a different readership. A hauntingly beautiful and somewhat melancholy collection, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is the perfect book for the poetry enthusiast with an interest in science, and its potential side effects.
February 2, 2015
The new book of poetry from Jeannine Hall Gailey contains her usual brilliance of language and imagery, and this time it's joined by a melancholy yet optimistic unity of theme and emotion. Jeannine (herself the daughter of a robot scientist) sets her poems in the book largely during her childhood and its fallout (pun intended) in the vicinity of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, where much of America's nuclear weapons program was developed. There is definitely an air of sadness about Jeannine's youth and the world around her, marked by the creeping and invisible menace of radiation that seems to infect everything and everyone. She writes simply and eloquently of battles for life fought out within the walls of our very cells, and of the inevitable compromises with nature we have made in building weapons of untold destruction.
At the same time, there is a definite and very American optimism in the story of the title character, who continually remakes herself in her imagination and overcomes the weaknesses of humanity that are vulnerable to insidious radiation. There is hope, as Jeannine says: "something here about/the resilience of earth, of humanity; something hopeful/in the faces of those yellow sunflowers".
It is a truly lovely book, from a wonderful mind.
At the same time, there is a definite and very American optimism in the story of the title character, who continually remakes herself in her imagination and overcomes the weaknesses of humanity that are vulnerable to insidious radiation. There is hope, as Jeannine says: "something here about/the resilience of earth, of humanity; something hopeful/in the faces of those yellow sunflowers".
It is a truly lovely book, from a wonderful mind.
April 30, 2015
Jeannine Hall Gailey’s fourth poetry collection, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, reanimates the haunting world of 1970s Oak Ridge Valley, Tennessee, where residents lived in the shadow of both the Smoky Mountains and a government nuclear research facility once known as “America’s Secret City.” In an engaging author’s note, Gailey describes her childhood as the daughter of a robotics professor who consulted at the classified Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) and introduces the fictional Robot Scientist’s Daughter of her collection, who she calls “fantastic” but admits shares many of her traits. The poems that make up this collection move in a controlled way between fact and fiction, autobiography and fantasy, giving readers glimpses into the secret world surrounding ORNL in which Gailey grew up, at the same time as they tell the story of a fictional Robot Scientist’s Daughter who was transformed by that world into something other, something monstrous. This book documents the terrible secrets of Oak Ridge that might otherwise be forgotten and explores the darkness and light within each of us. Gailey’s most haunting and masterful book yet.
October 31, 2015
This book gives an important perspective on the legacy of nuclear science, the long half-life of its physical and psychic toll. It does so with the humor, whimsy, imagination and genre mashups (comic book, poetry, fairy tale, etc.) I love in Jeannine Hall Gailey's work.
May 21, 2015
This is a gripping book of poems, telling a real story about radioactivity as well as a richly imagined one. Actual review here: http://www.escapeintolife.com/blog/th...
September 14, 2015
Excellent book. Will re-read more than once.
August 4, 2015
I will review this soon.
August 4, 2021
Fantastic. Well-shaped as a book, and the individual poems are excellent too.
I've been listening to the podcast The Constant, and many of the stories there having to do with radiation poisoning (as well as lead poisoning) fill out this storyscape well. A nice compliment.
I've been listening to the podcast The Constant, and many of the stories there having to do with radiation poisoning (as well as lead poisoning) fill out this storyscape well. A nice compliment.
May 12, 2017
I need more of Gailey's poetry now.
March 17, 2019
Science poetry is really good poetry.
August 21, 2020
Having grown up not too far from the Oak Ridge Laboratory where these poems are set, I really enjoyed this collection, especially the author's descriptions of the flora and fauna of Appalachia.
June 18, 2018
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter presents the harrowing truth of growing up in the town of Oakridge, TN, aka The Atomic City and the Secret City, home of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a pilot plant for the production of plutonium. The speaker shares eye-opening details of growing up in what appears on the surface to be a typical small American town, where sunbeams and fossilized snails share a backyard rife with radioactive dirt, a town where “they lit cesium to measure the glow,” where everything is “unstable, unstable, dancing away, ticking away in bones, fingernails, brain.”
In “The Women of America’s Secret City in 1945,” we learn that lab employees, including the speaker’s father, have “been warned / by a billboard on the way to work: / ‘What you see here … stays here.’ In the same poem Gailey sums up in one stunning simile the friendly female employees who were “contained / like the particles under the K-25 and Y-12.”
The warning becomes increasingly menacing as we learn in poems such as “The Taste of Rust in August,” that the speaker has iron-poor blood and her skin is wan. Could this be because “she knows the click of the Geiger counter / better than her own heart,” because “what they sowed in the ground isn’t gone”? Signs point to a resounding yes. As the book progresses, we learn along with the speaker that not only lilies and foxgloves naturally deadly, but seemingly benign objects, including snowmen, are “hot” (“Lessons in Poison”).
Gailey’s collection contains several poems with the same title: “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter,” but each one is followed by a descriptor in brackets ([Before], [in films, [sign of hope], etc. In “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter [medical wonder],” the speaker imagines herself an impenetrable robot, “silver and shiny and smooth … a soldier, / a savior.” In my very favorite of this group of imagined scenarios of the speaker’s powers, “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter [Polonium-210], the speaker has morphed to a “tightly-controlled molecule,” teetering “at the edge of decay, a half-life of skin and soul.”
Throughout this fascinating collection, we learn, through Gailey’s exacting eye, that the disconnect between what’s really going on and what seems to be going on is gargantuan. In one of the most tragically poignant poems, “Chaos Theory,” a janitor’s garden is reveled at for its “dahlias and tomatoes / doubling and tripling in size
and variety, magentas, pinks and reds so bright / they blinded,” when in fact the father knows but cannot “translate / for him the meaning of all this unnatural beauty.” The poem ends with the tragic detail that
“When my father brought this story home, / he never mentioned the janitor’s slow death from radiation / poisoning, only those roses, those tomatoes.”
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is a stern reminder that while nuclear power is arguably a ‘clean’’ source of energy compared to coal, an often unspoken truth is that radiation can sicken, debilitate, and kill people. In “She Explains Her Fear of Bees,” we learn that what the speaker thought were bees are actually wasps, a dead-ringer metaphor for the seemingly benevolent overseers of The Manhattan Project:
Yellow jackets don’t
lose their stinger, like honeybees. They keep stinging. They are really
wasps, not bees at all, little liars. Why do they hide underground?
To teach us dangers unseen …
These ‘dangers unseen’ fuel Gailey’s latest collection, a necessary window into the dangers inherent in nuclear power and weapons production.
In “The Women of America’s Secret City in 1945,” we learn that lab employees, including the speaker’s father, have “been warned / by a billboard on the way to work: / ‘What you see here … stays here.’ In the same poem Gailey sums up in one stunning simile the friendly female employees who were “contained / like the particles under the K-25 and Y-12.”
The warning becomes increasingly menacing as we learn in poems such as “The Taste of Rust in August,” that the speaker has iron-poor blood and her skin is wan. Could this be because “she knows the click of the Geiger counter / better than her own heart,” because “what they sowed in the ground isn’t gone”? Signs point to a resounding yes. As the book progresses, we learn along with the speaker that not only lilies and foxgloves naturally deadly, but seemingly benign objects, including snowmen, are “hot” (“Lessons in Poison”).
Gailey’s collection contains several poems with the same title: “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter,” but each one is followed by a descriptor in brackets ([Before], [in films, [sign of hope], etc. In “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter [medical wonder],” the speaker imagines herself an impenetrable robot, “silver and shiny and smooth … a soldier, / a savior.” In my very favorite of this group of imagined scenarios of the speaker’s powers, “The Robot Scientist’s Daughter [Polonium-210], the speaker has morphed to a “tightly-controlled molecule,” teetering “at the edge of decay, a half-life of skin and soul.”
Throughout this fascinating collection, we learn, through Gailey’s exacting eye, that the disconnect between what’s really going on and what seems to be going on is gargantuan. In one of the most tragically poignant poems, “Chaos Theory,” a janitor’s garden is reveled at for its “dahlias and tomatoes / doubling and tripling in size
and variety, magentas, pinks and reds so bright / they blinded,” when in fact the father knows but cannot “translate / for him the meaning of all this unnatural beauty.” The poem ends with the tragic detail that
“When my father brought this story home, / he never mentioned the janitor’s slow death from radiation / poisoning, only those roses, those tomatoes.”
The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is a stern reminder that while nuclear power is arguably a ‘clean’’ source of energy compared to coal, an often unspoken truth is that radiation can sicken, debilitate, and kill people. In “She Explains Her Fear of Bees,” we learn that what the speaker thought were bees are actually wasps, a dead-ringer metaphor for the seemingly benevolent overseers of The Manhattan Project:
Yellow jackets don’t
lose their stinger, like honeybees. They keep stinging. They are really
wasps, not bees at all, little liars. Why do they hide underground?
To teach us dangers unseen …
These ‘dangers unseen’ fuel Gailey’s latest collection, a necessary window into the dangers inherent in nuclear power and weapons production.
June 27, 2016
This was an interesting collection of poetry, mostly due to its themes and central focus on an area of American history many may not know much about.
For a full review, please visit the following The Robot Scientist's Daughter
Hope you enjoy, and thanks to anyone who checks it out.
For a full review, please visit the following The Robot Scientist's Daughter
Hope you enjoy, and thanks to anyone who checks it out.
April 18, 2016
3.5
i was very interested in this, and excited to finally read it. i have to admit that the intro made a lot of the poems less special and intriguing for me, and i wish i could go back in time and read the work without that foreknowledge.
i was very interested in this, and excited to finally read it. i have to admit that the intro made a lot of the poems less special and intriguing for me, and i wish i could go back in time and read the work without that foreknowledge.
August 18, 2015
#bookbingonw
November 19, 2015
"The traces around you
of other people's experiments
linger in your veins,"
of other people's experiments
linger in your veins,"
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews