Poet/scientist Katherine Larson thrives on diversity. Though she’s passionate about science—entering and subsequently exiting four separate PhD programs in fields as diverse as conservation genetics and paleontology—Larson’s never been able to stomach devoting her life to one particular discipline. “Being able to sample from a number of different fields has been really rewarding to me as a poet,” she says. Larson explores the benefits of having a curious and unsettled mind in her Reading Frames essay, a piece in which she explains the delicate balance between science and art on display in her most recently published poetry collection, Radial Symmetry. “I think the dialogue between the unconscious and conscious mind is really crucial,” she says. “It’s a difficult balance to strike to make a project artistic without being didactic.”
Over the last 40 years, Thomas Finger has studied just about every sensory system in fish. He has an abiding interest, ...
