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.
