What do you think?
Rate this book
Mendeleev's Mandala
Poetry. MENDELEEV'S MANDALA begins in pilgrimage and ends in pilgrimage, but nowhere in-between does it find a home. Logic is the lodestar, as these poems struggle to make sense out of chaos. Jessica Goodfellow reimagines stories from the Old Testament, Greek mythology, and family history by invoking muses as diverse as Wittgenstein, Newton, the Wright Brothers, and an ancient Japanese monk. In the title poem, Mendeleev's periodic table, sparked by fire and by trains, sees the elements of the world come into focus as a geometric pattern that recalls the ancient mandalas, also blueprints of an expanding universe as a whole.
Throughout this book, Goodfellow uses and misuses mathematics, cosmology, biology, and etymology to push the boundaries of poetic form in a manner that mimics how time and tragedy push the human form to its limits. An examination of the history of clocks reveals that the human body is the ultimate clock. Aging, physical deterioration, and the disintegration of relationships are experienced as a ratio of what can and what can't be seen- the slow calamity of vision loss, both literal and metaphorical. Yet, despite the gravity of their themes, these poems are often heartbreakingly funny. Vacillating wildly between the consultation of gurus, monks, and fortunes tellers, and the chasing of reason as redemption in the face of impermanence, this book is equal parts wander and wonder. Welcome to the pilgrimage.
"This book is a library whittled down to a message in a bottle. Here is a poet who has boldly refused to abide to the expectations of genre—but instead, pushes language and form as a means of asking the most urgent questions. The result is a courageous and kaleidoscopic, at times tender and vulnerable, exploration of motherhood and family—set against the backdrops of science, history, religion, myths, and mathematics. When a poet embarks on a book as myriad and borderless as this one, we are gifted the rare chance to stand at the threshold of a formidable human storm. And from here, it is clear that Goodfellow's MENDELEEV'S MANDALA is an electric book. But its lines are not limited to lightning. They move more like thunder, startling, resonant, and suddenly everywhere in the mind at once."—Ocean Vuong
"Jessica Goodfellow has a joyous intelligence and electric tongue. Reading this book a first time, my only regret was that I couldn't read it a second first time. But then I read it a first second time and a first third. You see what I'm doing? I'm reading this book over and over, without ever completely taking it in. I think you will too. And like me, want only one thing from Jessica Goodfellow—more."—Bob Hicok
"From the origin of the number zero to immigration to map making, these poems leap dynamically between ideas and a blazing exploration of language. Folding and unfolding with searing brilliance, these poems reveal our human condition with a down-to- earth sense of humor and wonder. This must-read collection nourishes mind and body and opens up whole new ways of seeing the world around us."—Judy Halebsky
Throughout this book, Goodfellow uses and misuses mathematics, cosmology, biology, and etymology to push the boundaries of poetic form in a manner that mimics how time and tragedy push the human form to its limits. An examination of the history of clocks reveals that the human body is the ultimate clock. Aging, physical deterioration, and the disintegration of relationships are experienced as a ratio of what can and what can't be seen- the slow calamity of vision loss, both literal and metaphorical. Yet, despite the gravity of their themes, these poems are often heartbreakingly funny. Vacillating wildly between the consultation of gurus, monks, and fortunes tellers, and the chasing of reason as redemption in the face of impermanence, this book is equal parts wander and wonder. Welcome to the pilgrimage.
"This book is a library whittled down to a message in a bottle. Here is a poet who has boldly refused to abide to the expectations of genre—but instead, pushes language and form as a means of asking the most urgent questions. The result is a courageous and kaleidoscopic, at times tender and vulnerable, exploration of motherhood and family—set against the backdrops of science, history, religion, myths, and mathematics. When a poet embarks on a book as myriad and borderless as this one, we are gifted the rare chance to stand at the threshold of a formidable human storm. And from here, it is clear that Goodfellow's MENDELEEV'S MANDALA is an electric book. But its lines are not limited to lightning. They move more like thunder, startling, resonant, and suddenly everywhere in the mind at once."—Ocean Vuong
"Jessica Goodfellow has a joyous intelligence and electric tongue. Reading this book a first time, my only regret was that I couldn't read it a second first time. But then I read it a first second time and a first third. You see what I'm doing? I'm reading this book over and over, without ever completely taking it in. I think you will too. And like me, want only one thing from Jessica Goodfellow—more."—Bob Hicok
"From the origin of the number zero to immigration to map making, these poems leap dynamically between ideas and a blazing exploration of language. Folding and unfolding with searing brilliance, these poems reveal our human condition with a down-to- earth sense of humor and wonder. This must-read collection nourishes mind and body and opens up whole new ways of seeing the world around us."—Judy Halebsky
- GenresPoetry
100 pages, Paperback
First published February 16, 2015
2 people are currently reading
264 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 25, 2017
This book continues to engage my imagination at deeper and deeper levels each time I read it.
April 28, 2015
Goodfellow's poems are intricate and resonant; I love how she takes language and image apart and then splices them back together again, always with surprising, masterful results.
March 11, 2015
From capturing a moment of watching the planet Mars with a spouse and a three-year old son to observing a crow crouching near a trash can, Jessica Goodfellow, in her newest collection of poetry sifts through the intersections of science, mythology, and everyday life finding wonderment in both the ordinary and the virtually unknown. While including some more traditional forms of poetry, including the sonnet and the pantoum, Goodfellow also pushes the boundaries of language including experimenting with the grammar rules of the comma and juxtaposing the science of clouds with the myths. Her section that follows "The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau" in a series of surreal poems is wonderful and worth committing to memory.
April 23, 2015
I'm not a big poetry reader (OK, I almost never read poetry at all), but I read this author's poetry. The best way I can describe it is that it's muscular, that the language is so textured and vivid and physical, that it always stays with me after reading.
May 18, 2015
I read this book slowly, savoring the language & brilliance of Jessica Goodfellow's writing. It is a book with many dimensions and an emotional tug to the heart when she reveals her husband is going blind, and her son may be color blind already and progressing towards blindness. Her writing is brilliant, using philosophy, science, myth, astronomy, physics, and a brilliant play in her use of language.
The third section of the book contains prose poems based on the character, The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau...., it is as if Gertrude Stein has been reincarnated in Jessica's writing. The character quotes Wittgenstein (philosopher), Sara Genn (artist), & Greg Parrish (illustrator). She starts the section with a long description of the color eigengrau, for short it is intrinsic gray, and two quotes. One from Paul Klee, "Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet." And one from Pierre Bonnard, "Color is an act of reason." We are led into a world of words and a cat named Schrodinger. I looked up this name and Schrodinger's Cat is a thought experiment created by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger in 1935. Her cat is white on one side, black on the other. And somewhere in the book has kittens.
[Schrödinger's cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.]
In my favorite poem in this section, The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau Thinks About Thinking, she reflects on what has been shown from a variety of studies, that we recycle our thoughts, thinking the same thoughts 90% of the time. She ends this prose poem with the line, "The girl whos favorite color is eigengrau thinks that thinking the same thoughts again and again is like a blind man cleaning up broken glass." This reflects her circling around and around the issue of sight and color and the metaphors of how we see the world. How many times have we swept up glass in our kitchens and how impossible it is to see those last shreds. The many subtexts in her work astonish me.
Near the beginning is a poem about apples, Imagine No Apples, opening with an epigraph from astronomer-physicist Chet Raymo, "All beginnings wear their endings like dark shadows." The quote is the first line of the poem and each stanza starts with a variation of this quote, where apples turn to dark shadows and she uses this to question: "Imagine no apples:/everyone still naked; all of physics symied./No one to say Oh, this is gravity,/or, Ah, this is sin./Would we be better off, would we be happier,/sinless and floating, or if not actually floating,/still capable of hoping to rise."
Close to the end is another apple poem, Favorite Apples of the Presidents, where she names many extinct varieties of apples. Here the poem banters back and forth in conversation: "When I mouthed the words Crow's Egg, Faust's Winter, Seek-/no-Further, my husband remarked, "You shouldn't choose an apple/for its name," by which he meant, "You could never be the President." In this poem she also brings up Eve in the garden cluching an apple. At the end she is juggling three apples that, "...kept circling, swarming without me,/like firefliers, like electrons: Red Torque, Burning Green, Nonesuch." (the names of these last three, and all the apples throughout are in italics, which Goodreads won't let me show.) I am moved by this poem to see so many names of apples, the bounty has been lost.
The book is rich, deep, readable, and meant to be read again and again for its many layers of meaning.
The third section of the book contains prose poems based on the character, The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau...., it is as if Gertrude Stein has been reincarnated in Jessica's writing. The character quotes Wittgenstein (philosopher), Sara Genn (artist), & Greg Parrish (illustrator). She starts the section with a long description of the color eigengrau, for short it is intrinsic gray, and two quotes. One from Paul Klee, "Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet." And one from Pierre Bonnard, "Color is an act of reason." We are led into a world of words and a cat named Schrodinger. I looked up this name and Schrodinger's Cat is a thought experiment created by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger in 1935. Her cat is white on one side, black on the other. And somewhere in the book has kittens.
[Schrödinger's cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.]
In my favorite poem in this section, The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau Thinks About Thinking, she reflects on what has been shown from a variety of studies, that we recycle our thoughts, thinking the same thoughts 90% of the time. She ends this prose poem with the line, "The girl whos favorite color is eigengrau thinks that thinking the same thoughts again and again is like a blind man cleaning up broken glass." This reflects her circling around and around the issue of sight and color and the metaphors of how we see the world. How many times have we swept up glass in our kitchens and how impossible it is to see those last shreds. The many subtexts in her work astonish me.
Near the beginning is a poem about apples, Imagine No Apples, opening with an epigraph from astronomer-physicist Chet Raymo, "All beginnings wear their endings like dark shadows." The quote is the first line of the poem and each stanza starts with a variation of this quote, where apples turn to dark shadows and she uses this to question: "Imagine no apples:/everyone still naked; all of physics symied./No one to say Oh, this is gravity,/or, Ah, this is sin./Would we be better off, would we be happier,/sinless and floating, or if not actually floating,/still capable of hoping to rise."
Close to the end is another apple poem, Favorite Apples of the Presidents, where she names many extinct varieties of apples. Here the poem banters back and forth in conversation: "When I mouthed the words Crow's Egg, Faust's Winter, Seek-/no-Further, my husband remarked, "You shouldn't choose an apple/for its name," by which he meant, "You could never be the President." In this poem she also brings up Eve in the garden cluching an apple. At the end she is juggling three apples that, "...kept circling, swarming without me,/like firefliers, like electrons: Red Torque, Burning Green, Nonesuch." (the names of these last three, and all the apples throughout are in italics, which Goodreads won't let me show.) I am moved by this poem to see so many names of apples, the bounty has been lost.
The book is rich, deep, readable, and meant to be read again and again for its many layers of meaning.
April 13, 2015
THIS REVIEW FIRST APPEARED IN THE COMPULSIVE READER
Spoiler alert. The carpet gets pulled from under you in Mendeleev’s Mandala by Jessica Goodfellow. This happens in the second of the five sections of the book when Goodfellow confides that her husband is going blind and that she fears the same fate belies her young son. This declaration sheds light on much that comes before and after it. Goodfellow takes the reader on a ride taut with emotions. Among other things, the book showcases her intelligence in that she willingly handles words as a seasoned juggler handles that which is juggled.
Goodfellow elaborates on the declaration in “Three Views of Mars”. This poem paints the picture of a family’s visit to an observatory. A child is asked if he sees the big red star and he replies “I don’t know.” This response triggers fear in the mother. Goodfellow writes, “ ‘I don’t know” could mean “Yes, “ or “No,” or “I have my eyes closed like last time.’ It might even mean he is already night-blind, the first symptom of retinitis pigmentosa, the disease blinding his father” (46).
Her husband will become completely blind in time. And maybe her son too. This happening explains why Goodfellow seems fascinated with time and instruments that measure it. She writes, “as long as there is in this world a clock, we have no chance of acting without a reason, no hope such purity in being or in guttering –beguiled, like piebald priests who spent candles to clock sermons, like tonsured monks pushing their illumination only to calculate when it was safe, at last, to stop praying” (“In Praise of the Candle Clock”, 33). The poem points to the inherent inevitability of life and the need to take note of it, even though it cannot be controlled.
A similar sentiment is expressed in “Ode to the Hourglass”, a poem that takes the shape of its title, “No matter how many times you’ve seen her slide sideways on her axis you still insist time flows in one direction, like you do, lock step, all cause and effect, while she is of two everythings, or more, and equally. That’s why, when she grants you the dainty twist of her wrist, you never ever know if she’s waving good-bye or waving hello” (38). Here, Goodfellow explores the boundlessness of time, that it cannot be ordered liked the periodic table of elements where Mendeleev “dream chemistry out of chaos and into a grid” (“Mendeleev’s Mandala”, 12). For Goodfellow, “There is so much chaos even order is made of it” (“The Book of the Edge”, 67).
The color gray or eigengrau encapsulates the position that Goodfellow finds herself in. Eigengrau is the color seen by the eyes in complete darkness. The book consists of a series of poems about a girl whose favorite color is eigengrau. This girl is “able to exist anywhere and thus at home nowhere, except in the dark which is lit by her consciousness although she cannot see that, and also cannot help but see it, and thus it is not the dark” (“Pity the Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau”, 53). (It is important to note here that the life of the mind, and one would hope that of the heart too, serves as reprieve for the girl). A series of traits and events are shared about the life of this girl, including that she “marries a blind man whose eyes are the color of a Rembrandt iris. She and her husband never discuss eigengrau in the same way that they don’t discuss red and green and yellow” (“The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau Gets Married”, 61). This poem, and others in the series, is similar to “The Bind Man’s Wife Makes a List of Words She Must No Longer Use” because “what’s happening to him is biblical, smitten by God’s curse counted among madness and astonishment of the heart” (41).
But Goodfellow’s book is not chock-full of despair. There is a welcomed humor that shines through the poems, because of her ability to play with words. This is present even in a poem as serious as the above mentioned, where Goodfellow lists avoidable words, “blind date, love at first sight, second sight, stars in your eyes, only have eyes for you, blind love, blind devotion, sight for sore eyes, see-through blouse, easy on the eyes, roving eye, eye candy, bedroom eyes” (42). Goodfellow’s work reminds us of Camus’ encouragement to picture Sisyphus smiling as he carried out his punishment. This reminder is noteworthy, especially when this battle is herculean like blindness.
Spoiler alert. The carpet gets pulled from under you in Mendeleev’s Mandala by Jessica Goodfellow. This happens in the second of the five sections of the book when Goodfellow confides that her husband is going blind and that she fears the same fate belies her young son. This declaration sheds light on much that comes before and after it. Goodfellow takes the reader on a ride taut with emotions. Among other things, the book showcases her intelligence in that she willingly handles words as a seasoned juggler handles that which is juggled.
Goodfellow elaborates on the declaration in “Three Views of Mars”. This poem paints the picture of a family’s visit to an observatory. A child is asked if he sees the big red star and he replies “I don’t know.” This response triggers fear in the mother. Goodfellow writes, “ ‘I don’t know” could mean “Yes, “ or “No,” or “I have my eyes closed like last time.’ It might even mean he is already night-blind, the first symptom of retinitis pigmentosa, the disease blinding his father” (46).
Her husband will become completely blind in time. And maybe her son too. This happening explains why Goodfellow seems fascinated with time and instruments that measure it. She writes, “as long as there is in this world a clock, we have no chance of acting without a reason, no hope such purity in being or in guttering –beguiled, like piebald priests who spent candles to clock sermons, like tonsured monks pushing their illumination only to calculate when it was safe, at last, to stop praying” (“In Praise of the Candle Clock”, 33). The poem points to the inherent inevitability of life and the need to take note of it, even though it cannot be controlled.
A similar sentiment is expressed in “Ode to the Hourglass”, a poem that takes the shape of its title, “No matter how many times you’ve seen her slide sideways on her axis you still insist time flows in one direction, like you do, lock step, all cause and effect, while she is of two everythings, or more, and equally. That’s why, when she grants you the dainty twist of her wrist, you never ever know if she’s waving good-bye or waving hello” (38). Here, Goodfellow explores the boundlessness of time, that it cannot be ordered liked the periodic table of elements where Mendeleev “dream chemistry out of chaos and into a grid” (“Mendeleev’s Mandala”, 12). For Goodfellow, “There is so much chaos even order is made of it” (“The Book of the Edge”, 67).
The color gray or eigengrau encapsulates the position that Goodfellow finds herself in. Eigengrau is the color seen by the eyes in complete darkness. The book consists of a series of poems about a girl whose favorite color is eigengrau. This girl is “able to exist anywhere and thus at home nowhere, except in the dark which is lit by her consciousness although she cannot see that, and also cannot help but see it, and thus it is not the dark” (“Pity the Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau”, 53). (It is important to note here that the life of the mind, and one would hope that of the heart too, serves as reprieve for the girl). A series of traits and events are shared about the life of this girl, including that she “marries a blind man whose eyes are the color of a Rembrandt iris. She and her husband never discuss eigengrau in the same way that they don’t discuss red and green and yellow” (“The Girl Whose Favorite Color is Eigengrau Gets Married”, 61). This poem, and others in the series, is similar to “The Bind Man’s Wife Makes a List of Words She Must No Longer Use” because “what’s happening to him is biblical, smitten by God’s curse counted among madness and astonishment of the heart” (41).
But Goodfellow’s book is not chock-full of despair. There is a welcomed humor that shines through the poems, because of her ability to play with words. This is present even in a poem as serious as the above mentioned, where Goodfellow lists avoidable words, “blind date, love at first sight, second sight, stars in your eyes, only have eyes for you, blind love, blind devotion, sight for sore eyes, see-through blouse, easy on the eyes, roving eye, eye candy, bedroom eyes” (42). Goodfellow’s work reminds us of Camus’ encouragement to picture Sisyphus smiling as he carried out his punishment. This reminder is noteworthy, especially when this battle is herculean like blindness.
September 26, 2015
I am a bad reviewer, I wish it would be different but I just don’t know how to do it, with all those lines taken out of different poems to demonstrate my thoughts and the poets wonders.
Actually I had only the time to read the first poem of this collection. Then I had to take the time to write
————————————-this no-review:—————————————–
As a writer I don’t like collections as this one, starting with a beautiful cover and telling me straight up on the first title, the first line, what is the problem.
I know what the problem is; the problem is that the first poem, the very first line is a punch. No time to get accustomed to. You sit down with a hot cup of bitter coffee or a ware mug of sweet fishy green tea and hope to read some nice lines, if you are lucky some beautiful ideas well placed, you hope to get a glimpse into another worlds, into the heart of a fellow living being but instead you are being punched and dragged in. Losing space and time you wake up from that state as if you have been unconsciousness for any length of time to discover you have drowned and missed the appointed with your doctor for which you were waiting for what seems to be ages. But once you gain the feeling of your body again you don’t need one any more, you feel much better
Actually I had only the time to read the first poem of this collection. Then I had to take the time to write
————————————-this no-review:—————————————–
As a writer I don’t like collections as this one, starting with a beautiful cover and telling me straight up on the first title, the first line, what is the problem.
I know what the problem is; the problem is that the first poem, the very first line is a punch. No time to get accustomed to. You sit down with a hot cup of bitter coffee or a ware mug of sweet fishy green tea and hope to read some nice lines, if you are lucky some beautiful ideas well placed, you hope to get a glimpse into another worlds, into the heart of a fellow living being but instead you are being punched and dragged in. Losing space and time you wake up from that state as if you have been unconsciousness for any length of time to discover you have drowned and missed the appointed with your doctor for which you were waiting for what seems to be ages. But once you gain the feeling of your body again you don’t need one any more, you feel much better
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews