The Amateur Scientist's Notebook
In The Amateur Scientist's Notebook, the full-length debut from Jesse DeLong, the beauty and processes of the natural world are distilled in the cycles and seasons of human love. DeLong poignantly observes the paradoxes and parallels between seed and bird; water and stem; history and humanity. With sharp lyricism and formal ingenuity that interrupts and intertwines, DeLong creates an experience of the world, a story of life. Fragmented yet familiar these poems become "acts of attention that carry, often indistinguishably, great beauty and disillusion."The Amateur Scientist's Notebook does the hard work of affirming humanity as a part of the natural world in all of its volatility and symmetry, speaking for both the segment and the singular, the continuous, and the instantaneous. The Amateur Scientist's Notebook marks Jesse DeLong as a major emerging talent in American poetics.
Jesse DeLong teaches Composition and Literature at Louisiana State University, but he grew up in Northern Idaho and Western Montana. He holds a B.A.in English from the University of Montana and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Alabama. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Best New Poets 2011 and Feast: Poetry and Recipes for a Full Seating at Dinner as well as the journals Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, Indiana Review, Painted Bride Quarterly and Typo. With book artist Sonja G. Rossow, he has published several artist’s books and chapbooks, including Tearings and Other Poems, and Earthwards, both through Curley Head Press. Other than traditional academic settings, DeLong has taught Literature at Donaldson Correctional Facility and has worked as a Case Manager at a Reentry Services Center, teaching hard-and-soft-skill courses, such as Anger Management and Parenting, to parolees and probationers. He resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
