Naming Nature, Carol Kaesuk Yoon (nonfiction)

Whether you are a scientist or a reader of science or just someone who cares deeply about the world, you will find much to like in Carol Kaesuk Yoon's book, Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science.

I first discovered Yoon's writing when I read her essay about the movie Avatar in The New York Times. A science writer with a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology, she has been writing articles for NYT for years, but it was the blockbuster movie that first brought her writing to my attention. I immediately responded to her "potent joy" in the wonders of the natural world. That and her very engaging way with words.

In that essay, she mentioned she had just completed a book, Naming Nature. I sought it out, and I was not disappointed. Naming Nature journeys through the history of the science of taxonomy, scrutinizing our desire to make sense of the natural world, and argues that it is driven by the human "umwelt" (pronounced, as Yoon helpfully notes, OOM-velt). Our umwelt consists of what we perceive in the world, so it will vary from place to place. Someone who lives in the desert will have a very different umwelt from someone who lives in the mountains.

There is nothing dry about taxonomy the way Yoon tells it. Here's how she describes the cassowary, a creature that has given taxonomists and various peoples fits over the years — is it a bird or not?

Sometimes reaching six and a half feet tall, the cassowary is a claw-your-eyes-out-if-cornered bipedal bird, with a black mop of a body, a tiny head that can be shockingly bright blue, and hefty, clomping legs and feet. Think bloated, sinister-looking Big Bird with attitude...

After tracing the evolution of traditional taxonomy, its battles to define and order nature that is no longer local but global, its rise and inevitable fall when pitted against mathematical proofs and scientific observations at the level of microorganisms, Yoon concludes with a direct appeal to the non-scientists among us. She makes the case that — while there is value in science discovering what cannot be perceived with human eyes — we should not be so quick to give up our connection to the natural world:

The living world is dying, but it's not too late...Think back to a time in your life before you knew what science was, before you could tell a Coke from a Pepsi..when every beacon on your umwelt shone bright and clear and welcome. Then find an organism—any organism, small, large, gaudy, subtle, exotic, mundane...and get a sense of it, its shape, color, size, feel, smell, sound. Feel your umwelt rev up...Then find a name for it. Take your pick... This changes everything, yourself included... once you have a name ... you begin to see the shape, the natural order of living things. You will begin to notice life where it is, all around you. It's not too late.

This is a praise song for the living world.

I am not alone in my enthusiasm for Naming Nature. It was named a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, one of the Best Books of 2009 by New Scientist, one of the Best Sci-Tech Books of 2009 by Library Journal.

This is the best kind of science writing: I learned a great deal, and I loved every minute.

The Stream Singing Your Name, Jean LeBlanc (poetry/tanka and sijo)

Every once in awhile, I come across a book I do not want to end, that engages on many levels and invites me to re-read, to linger a bit longer. Jean LeBlanc's The Stream Singing Your Name is just such a book.

I was unfamiliar with LeBlanc's work before discovering it at the Modern English Tanka Press, but I was intrigued when I realized it contained both tanka and sijo. Sijo — pronounced shee-jo — is a classical Korean form consisting of three lines, traditionally 14-15 syllables each. LeBlanc intermingles the two forms, sometimes alternating, sometimes offering a sequence of sijo or a series of tanka, and creates a tapestry that brings out the best in each.

I find myself returning especially to her sijo. With its languid long lines, they are a beautiful foil to the emotional immediacy of the shorter-lined tanka. I have so many favorites in this collection. But on this day, I was struck by this lyrical and life-affirming sijo:

When I die, do what you have to do to make me, not of this earth,
but of these rocks, this limestone ridge. I want to feed the lichens,
anchor ferns firmly in these clefts, become my mineral self.

Whether she is writing about her students who don't distinguish between funereal and funeral, the dandelions she gives free rein every spring, her father's shoulders made strong from chopping wood or her garden in October with its

redbud leaves
and other crinkled hearts
beneath my feet

Jean LeBlanc reveals a deep regard for the world. Throughout the collection, the flow seems effortless, taking the reader from one to the next, until you arrive at the stream of the title in the final double sijo, and:

You wonder if you could just stand here, forever,
the stream singing your name around you.

The Unworn Necklace, Roberta Beary (poetry/haiku)

hating him
between bites
of unripe plums

Roberta Beary's haiku often give the reader a sensory double-shot. When I read the above haiku, for example, I feel the hardness of the immature heart-shaped fruit even as my mouth puckers with the bitterness of plum and love gone sour.

For five years in the 90s, Beary lived in Tokyo, where she began her study of haiku. It was time well-spent. Although The Unworn Necklace is her first collection, many of the haiku within are award-winners.

As one whose cats heighten my own awareness of the natural world, I immediately identified with this, which won Honorable Mention in the National League of American Pen Women's International Haiku Contest 1997:

not hearing it
till the cat stirs
birdsong

And I was struck by the emotional subtlety and suggestion of something greater than we can know in this haiku, which was awarded Grand Prize in the Kusamakura International Haiku Competition in 2006:

thunder
the roses shift
into shadow

And this:

funeral home
here too
she straightens his tie

That bittersweet acknowledgement is what I respond to in so many of Beary's haiku. This is haiku that echoes in the mind and heart long after the book has been put away.

Bringing Yoga to Life, Donna Farhi (nonfiction)

I am one of those people who likes the idea of yoga but rarely manages more than a session every blue moon. But the blurb on the back of Donna Farhi's Bringing Yoga to Life promised "a practical discipline for everyday living...encouraging and straightforward." And much to my amazement, it has motivated me to spend a few minutes each day on the mat.

What is different about Farhi's approach? It sounds odd, but I responded to her voice — not in some woo-hoo way, but to its clarity and frankness.

Early in the first section, "Coming Home," she writes:

… we may notice that we consistently allow the urgent to override the important... that we have a deeply ingrained habit of giving the most time, energy, and commitment to things that ultimately are not very important...

And with that she had me. Allowing the urgent to override the important is what I do best.

In the book’s third section, “Roadblocks and Distractions,” she takes on sloth, strong emotions, blind spots, assumptions, and self-worth, and makes it clear that yoga practice will reveal much more than your ability to hold a pose. If she had not already acquired credibility in the earlier chapters — through her empathy for the difficulty of practice and her honesty in exposing fallacy in shortcuts — she would have with this:

I am always a bit suspicious of people who walk around spouting angelic proclamations about how wonderful and beautiful and full of light everything is... I'm not talking about the wonderful silence that one feels around a Tibetan monk, who really is that silence. I'm talking about a flamboyant, in-your-face, exhibitionist goodness that should have warning labels on it.

And at the close of the book:

All Yoga practices lead to seeing things as they are... Instead of running away, we can sit still, breathe, and watch.

Nothing easy about it. But Farhi inspired me to begin.