A review of Elemental Haiku by Esther Santiago at Long River Review, March 2020.

… A few weeks ago, I came across a fascinating book titled Elemental Haiku: Poems to honor the periodic table, three lines at a time by British author Mary Soon Lee. The poetry collection features one poem for each element of the periodic table (a total of 118), and the bottom of the page includes a footnote describing the element, so you learn as you read. The three line poems carry an essence of simplicity, musicality and marvelous imagery….

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A review of Elemental Haiku by Salik Shah at Strange Horizons, February 2020.

Mary Soon Lee’s Elemental Haiku begins with an invocation—a dedication to her guru, her sensei, and to “all teachers whose lessons waken a love of the sciences.” This poetry collection of 120 poems honor the periodic table—each poem a tribute to the elements that make us, our world, and the universe. Lee is perhaps aware that she is writing a sacred text of our times, following the great tradition of the poets of Vedas and Koans. Here is a document of truth—detectable, verifiable—transmuting and changing, pervading the universe. The chart of the periodic table illustrated by Iris Gottlieb looks like a map of the stars, these secret keys seeming to hold the power to unlock the mysteries of the universe—the evolution of life, and the decay that follows mass extinctions.

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A review of
Elemental Haiku by The Sciku Project, September 2019

Two thousand and seventeen was an auspicious year for scientific haiku. Chromatin Haiku began the year tweeting DNA and histone haiku in earnest (having posted the first tentative tweets in the last days of 2016). The Sciku Project started in May, collecting examples of science haiku (sciku) from across the research spectrum. On the 4th August 2017 the poet and writer Mary Soon Lee published her collection of poems Elemental Haiku in the journal Science; 119 haiku, one for each element of the periodic table….

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