[In the following review of The Columbia History of American Poetry, Vos Post comments on the lack of “science” poets and poetry in the volume.]

Since the United States of America put human beings on the moon twenty-five years ago, it is no surprise that science is profoundly “In the American Grain,” and this is amply confirmed by a thematic thread running through The Columbia History of American Poetry. This is not to say that science dominates American poetry as much as it dominates the physical landscape of the postindustrial era, but that it returns again and again either as subject, anti-subject reacted against, or epistemological substratum to the poetic process.

What is in this book on this theme is very good, yet there are surprising omissions. The Columbia History of American Poetry makes no mention whatever of major American poets such as William Empson (b. 1906), with his science poems such as “The World’s End,” “High Dive,” “Letter I,” “Letter V,” “Invitation to Juno,” “Note on Local Flora,” and “Doctrinal Point.” William Everson is cited twice (583, 584) without a hint of his science poems such as “In the Shift of Stars,” “Who Sees through the Lens,” and “Orion.” H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) is very extensively cited—almost seven column inches in the index—without a squeak about her science poetry such as “Stars Wheel in Purple.” Why is Marilyn Hacker (558–59, 665) typecast as a “Formalist Lesbian poet” with no reference to her science fiction or her ties to Samuel Delany? Why Henry Holt but not Rochelle Holt?

Where is David Ignatow (b. 1914) and his “Poet to a Physicist in his Laboratory”? Stanley Kunitz gets half a dozen citations (xxxvii, 257, 653, 654–56, 661, 668), with no citation for “The Science of Night.” Why not Andrew Joron? Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) gets short shrift (60, 536) without “Reply to Mr. Wordsworth.” Michael McClure’s ten references actually include the book Scratching the Beat Surface (584–55) without pointing to his detailed discussion in that book of the Beat movement’s relationship between science and poetry, which ties together biologist Harold Morowitz, evolutionist Ernst Haeckel, science philosopher Alfred North Whitehead all in the context of Snyder, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Su Tung-p’o.

In all the discussion of Marianne Moore, why no hint of “In the Days of Prismatic Colour” or “Four Quartz Crystals”? We have Howard Nemerov (70, 78, 89) without “During a Solar Eclipse,” “Unscientific Postscript.” “Cosmic Comics,” or “Seeing Things.”

Kenneth Rexroth is given his due (77, 584, 586, 587, 599–600), but the reader would never know of his deep commitment to science poetry as shown by: “Moon Festival,” “A Lesson in Geography,” “Blood on a Dead World,” “The Great Nebula of Andromeda,” “Halley’s Comet,” “The Heart of Herakles,” “A Maze of Sparks of Gold,” “Protoplasm of Light,” “A Sword in a Cloud of Light,” “Lute Music,” “On What Planet?,” “Theory of Numbers,” “The Phoenix and the Tortoise, Part 4,” “The Dragon and the Unicorn, Part 1,” “The Heart’s Garden, the Garden’s Heart” in The Collected Longer Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (New York: New Dimensions, 1968); and “An Equation for Marie,” “Fundamental Disagreement with Two Contemporaries” (mathematics jargon in dispute with surrealism). “Inversely as the Square of their Distance Apart” (gravitation as a symbol for love), “OTTFFSSENTE,” “Pronesis, III,” “The Place,” “Theory of Numbers,” “A Lemma by Constance Reid” from The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth (New York: New Directions, 1966).

We see Adrienne Rich (xxviii, xxx, xxxi, 758, 660–62) but not her “Planetarium.” Muriel Rukeyser is mariginalized to a single citation (541) so there is no listing of “The Dam” or “Gibbs”—two particularly significant poems on mathematical beauty and understanding. Anne Sexton appears (641–44, xxvii, 636, xi, xviii, 75, 638, 646, 632, 664, xxvii, 636, 652) without “Riding the Elevator into the Sky” or “The Starry Night.” And where, oh where, is William Stafford, a major figure whether or not one appreciates “The Stars in the Hills”? Why nothing of D. M. Thomas, who before his best-selling novels such as The White Hotel was best known for his poems based on fiction by Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Tom Godwin, Damon Knight, and James H. Schmitz (Penguin Modern Poets II, 1968). Where is Lewis Turco, with or without the science fiction and fantasy element of A Cage of Creatures and Season of the Blood?

One might hardly expect mention of major science fiction authors whose reputations were established in prose but who have also published science fiction poetry. This pantheon includes Poul and Karen Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Greg Benford, Michael Bishop, James Blish, Orson Scott Card, Christine Carmichael, Stanton A. Coblentz, George Robert Ackworth Conquest (too popular a poet for Columbia?), John Creasy, L. Sprague de Camp, Gordon Dickson, Thomas Disch (England considers him one of America’s top-ten poets), George Alec Effinger, Suzette H. Elgin, Harlan Ellison, Carol Emswiller, Philip Jose Farmer, Kenneth Fearing (1902–61), John M. Ford, Janet Fox, Robert Frazier, Esther Friesner, Randall Garrett, Felix C. Gottschalk, Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, Frank Herbert, L. Ron Hubbard, John Inouye, John Jakes, George Clayton Johnson, Virginia Kidd, Stephen King (perhaps America’s best-known living or undead authors), Dean Koontz, Henry Kuttner, Geoffrey A. Landis, Alan P. Lightman, Alice M. Lightner, Jeffrey G. Liss, Robert A. W. Lowndes, Bruce McAllister, Ann McCaffrey, Frederik Pohl, Jonathan Vos Post, Fred Saberhagan, Pamela Sargent, Hilbert Schenck Jr., Lucius Shepard, John Sladek, Theodore Sturgeon, Steve Rasnic Tem, Gene van Troyer, George Henry Weiss (“Francis Flagg” 1898–1946), and Roger Zelazny.

One could go on in this vein, but, in all fairness, The Columbia History of American Poetry is neither an encyclopedia nor a CD-ROM and cannot reasonably make an effort to be complete, or even comprehensive, but merely representative. I have seen ample, indeed overwhelming, evidence for the thesis that science poetry is profoundly (in the words of William Carlos Williams) “In the American Grain.” I have traced a science and science fiction thematic thread through the tapestry of thirty chapters. One can hope that future editions (perhaps a more comprehensive electronic book or computer database edition) will explicitly acknowledge what is only implicit here: that the American spirit exalts (and sometimes recoils from) the stellar sweep of science, and that science fiction shares the stage with poetry.