Category Archives: Nomad Science

I’ve long loved Lisa Russ Spaar’s luminous, sensuous, luxurious writing, which is marvelously attuned to the protean and sometimes bewildering movements of body and mind, and to where the “borders” between them dissolve; so you can imagine how delighted I am to share Spaar’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“John Madera’s Nomad Science shimmers with an irresistible, ‘problem child’ American numen, by turns casting light and shade on, awe and indictment toward the vicissitudes, atrocities, and wonderments of the Anthropocene—upon empire, violence, technology, the cosmos, love, and language itself. Is there a philosopher, musician, phenomenologist, scientist, historian, astrologer, or writer with whom Madera hasn’t danced in his poetry’s search for meaning in the inconceivable? ‘I am there,’ Madera writes, ‘wording things into being / And counting the days, declaring it all good because it is: / It is all good, because it has been worded from wasn’t / Into is.’ Nomad Science is the news feed, the bloom scroll we’ve never needed more.”
—Lisa Russ Spaar, author of many books, including Madrigalia: New & Selected Poems, Paradise Close, and Hide-and-Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry

Andrew Joron’s poetry marvelously fuses scientific speculation and philosophical inquiry with an acute attention to the sonic textures of language; so you can imagine how delighted I am to share Joron’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“There is no mad science like poetry: John Madera’s Nomad Science proves it. These poems migrate through the pores of lived experience, collecting evidence that rupture and rapture are the same. Using his own version of poetic science, Madera has discovered how to sing upon the precipice of a system blinking red. Rippling with sonic and semantic interplay, driven by ecstatic doubt, Madera’s work operates at multiple levels, from the socio-personal to the cosmic. Against disaster, this poet takes the wide view: ‘To be at the end of the world,’ Madera writes, ‘is to be at the beginning / Of another one.’”
—Andrew Joron, author of many books, including O0, The Sound Mirror, Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems, and The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose

Rigoberto González’s vital, lyrical, syncretic writing across is a testament to the power of language to bridge cultures, histories, and lives; so you can imagine my immense delight to share González’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“Each of John Madera’s poems is a linguistic journey inviting us to ponder our everyday encounters with the human and the machine, and to elevate them into the imaginative, intelligent landscape of language and knowledge. Nomad Science is playful, cerebral, and altogether brilliant.”
—Rigoberto González, author of many books, including To the Boy Who Was Night, The Book of Ruin, and Unpeopled Eden

Cole Swensen’s brilliant, luminous, and profoundly intro- and extrospective writing enlarges our capacity for attention, wonder, and connection; so you can imagine my extreme delight to share Swensen’s advance praise for Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press), my forthcoming collection of poetry:

“These clear musings take an ambling gait, reflecting a mind both pensive and piercing, exuding a calm, yet committed attention to the things of this world. Madera ponders the big questions, such as existence and the Milky Way, but also the small ones—the Oxford comma and invisible pathogens—and all by way of their precise details. There’s a generous exactitude to the whole, which gives our world back to us, once again marvelously strange.”
—Cole Swensen, author of many books, including most recently And And And, Art in Time, On Walking On, and Landscapes on a Train