Mother Hubble's cupboard and other Ppems about inner and outer space

The book title, referencing Mother Hubble, is really just a springboard into a pool filled with matter, including dark matter, holes in matter, ordinary human beings, and a little bit of everything else that matters. Beyond the poems, a series of notes explains something of where the poems come from but, of course, not all. --David C. Kopaska-Merkel, author of Unwelcome Guests and Risk Assessment.


Reading Mother Hubble's Cupboard by Sandra Lindow is like sitting in the overlap of a dozen different planet's busy orbits watching them whizz by, except instead of planets they are physics, ecology, sensuality, folklore, and more. Oh, and also sometimes planets. The first section casts the Hubble Telescope as the titular Mother Hubble, and more than just a tool she's a character, a photographer documenting the mysteries of space with an artist's eye. The poetry balances the desire to look up and out and understand with the impulse look back towards the past to name and emotionally process our place in the universe - for example, the Royal Astronomy's Society nickname of the Unicorn Black Hole, not to mention dwarf stars, universal soup, universal trees and even metaphors new to Lindow's collection, like the universe as a Russian Matreshka doll. And as much as the book wanders far beyond our planet and our solar system and even further, Lindow still remembers to bring us home occasionally. As she says, "the great blue beast you ride...She's all you have. Ride/gently." --Amelia Gorman, Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota