Re: neuropoetics
To Mary Harrington: I've been researching nineteenth-century American literature and neuroscience, from the literary end (and it's nice to know of someone else in the Pioneer Valley who is interested in literature and neuroscience). While my focus is especially on fiction and ideas of the nervous system and the brain, one of the main figures for me is Oliver Wendell Holmes, who is persistently making comments about these matters. And, of course, he is known mostly as a poet. Here is a stanza from his poem, "The Living Temple," printed in The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table . Then mark the cloven sphere that holds All thought in its mysterious folds, That feels sensation's faintest thrill And flashes forth the sovereign will; Think on the stormy world that dwells Locked in its dim and clustering cells! The lightning gleams of power it sheds Along its hollow glassy threads! Best, Randall Knoper Department of English University of Massachusetts at Amherst