Like Tumors
Poem Review: “the young scientist speaks to an auditorium filled with her colleagues” by Hannah V. Warren
Hannah V. Warren’s poem “the young scientist speaks to an auditorium filled with her colleagues” is beautiful writing. Precisely chosen words are placed side by side until each short sentence produces something mammoth: the vivid image of a dead whale falling to the ocean floor; a half-formed velociraptor curled in on itself; sea worms drilling their way into bones; human teeth settling themselves among the soil and methane gas our corpses have left behind.
“we pack our skin with mud, plant our bodies in the ribcages of our ancestors / & wait for our bones to grow thick as we age in our pockets of earth”
The title clarifies what the poem is telling us. Or does it? “The young scientist speaks to an auditorium filled with her colleagues.” Is she asking the audience a simple This or That question? A morbid “would you rather?” Or is she asking the audience to reflect on how lasting of an impression we, as humans, SHOULD leave after death? Should our bodies be preserved for millions of years to come? Or should we, like the whale, sink into our surroundings to be fed upon by “underdark creatures?”
These are interesting questions to ask. On one hand, the whale fall is certainly more moral. Right? Sinking into the “abyssal zone” to provide nutrition and new life to the sharks and crabs is ostensibly altruistic. But, on the other hand, we can see the allure of preserving our bodies to the myth-making degree of the dinosaurs. Their skeletons provide us with so much information about the world we live in. They teach us about the past and the present; they guide us toward the future. Is the narrator asking her colleagues to choose between two moral paths for life-after-death? Or is she asking them to consider if what we’re creating NOW is worth leaving behind LATER?
“we have to ask ourselves what is thicker: surface-level lava or trench-deep water / when we find the answer, we’ll know to choose fossilization or whale fall”
Go to the link below and read the poem in its entirety. Then, come back here and let me know what you think. Is it significant that she is talking to her colleagues as opposed to strangers? What do the final two lines mean for the overall theme of the poem? Which path would you choose? I’m excited to hear what you all think.
