Sonnets from the Voyage of the Beagle

Poetry. Rick Mullin captures Darwin's gift for minute and thorough observation, his almost childlike delight in the sheer inexhaustible plenty that nature provides to every sense, his ongoing comparison between the strange and the familiar (the chaotically foreign with the orderly English), and his conflicting reactions to alien cultures and to the well- intentioned efforts to 'civilize' them. For me, the most notable aspect of this book is the way it is told, through a series of narrative sonnets whose language is as crisp and objective as the prose journal from which it draws data, but blessed by the speed, scope and passion of epic poetry.--Rhina Espaillat