One of the first books I ever bought, with the money I made from my first part-time job, was a collection of poems.
I've been chasing that high ever since. Over the years I have collected several collections of poems and more often than not, I need to be in a specific mindset before reading them. I tend to be a moody and melancholy person and reading poetry about whatever negative thing I'm going through, is a big hobby for me. Finding a collection of poems that is not specific to one kind of (bad) mood and me liking it, doesn't happen a lot.

HOWEVER, this one did it. Not going to lie, some of these poems made me feel like I should have paid more attention in school, but other poems made me feel like no one had ever quite understood me as much as the author had. The authors and topics are quite diverse, even though most (all?) have a background in science fiction. I believe there's a poem in here for everyone.

This is the book that every poetry person needs, especially those who do not yet love science. This is also the book that every science person needs, especially those who do not yet love poetry. And for those lucky ones already within the Venn diagram overlap of these two areas, this book will be a particular delight to discover.

My favorite poems from this book, in order of their appearance:
- "What A Time Traveler Needs Most" by Jane Yolen (quote: "What a time traveler needs most / when going back to childhood: / a solid plan that can be forgot")
- "Apocastasis" by Jennifer Crow (quote: "Given time enough, that egg will unbreak itself.")
- "Quantum Entanglement" by Ken Posner (quote: "Each set of us / Has come to the end of our Universe / Expecting an edge of cosmic brilliance // And found it is the middle.")
- "The Tsuchinoko Always Lies" by Megan Branning (quote: "Tell me raindrops can be filled with pearls.")

- Bonus points for the light-hearted fun of "Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman" by Ron Koertge, which proves that poetry can be a mischievous delight.

***Publisher, I hope you read this note! You have a major error in your TOC. The Jane Yolen poem is missing its attribution, and the title instead runs into the title of the next poem to look like one combined poem title.***

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this eARC for unbiased review.

Thank you IFP and NetGalley for the ARC.

I enjoyed this poetry collection a lot. It was quite diverse in form and subject matter, and, though I admit there were many poems that failed to resonate with me (which inevitably happens with highly subjective art like poetry), there were enough gems to make me think and feel deeply. Perhaps the collection could be further accentuated or elevated by including art or additional notes/introductions for each section.

Shouting out a few poems I particularly enjoyed:
Taxi Ride by Ian Goh
Ansibles by Ursula Whitcher
Final Dispatch by Robert Frazier
The Impending Apocalypse Helps Me Maintain Perspective by Steven Dondlinger

I did not realize that this was an anthology of contemporary-style poetry, and while I don't usually read much of this genre I still found this compilation to be relatively enjoyable! I think that it would be really interesting if there would be a little summary/epigraph before each section ('The Sum of Broken Parts', 'Impressions in Time', etc.) that would explain a little bit of what that specific collection is trying to portray instead of leaving that to the readers. I completely understand that poetry is very much up to interpretation, but it could potentially be interesting to see what the editor has to say about those sections, other than what is said in the introduction.

I enjoyed many of the poems in the anthology, particularly 'Collisions' by Kathryn Fritz because of her lyrical flow of the poem and the word choice that really helped me picture what she was writing about. I also enjoyed 'Leaving' by Bruce McAllister because even though it was short, it really resonated with how I felt in the past and even currently. Speculative fiction especially when its represented through fantastical or futuristic genres, has always been interesting and fascinating to read and I find that this anthology really allows readers to explore different forms of it!

A wonderfully beautiful and thought provoking collection of poems that centres around science fiction, tales of the future, AI, the body and many more!

This was such a great read that any fan of poetry or sci-fi will appreciate. There is truly a poem for everyone in this collection. This book consists of poems written in many different forms and styles, from long to short, ones that tell us a story and others that will leave you with existential dread.

I would love to receive this as gift and will definitely be gifting it forward!

I had two absolutely favourites from this collection!
'Taxi Ride' by Ian Goh is a heartbreaking poem discussing the impact of a disaster on a town with the most beautiful of imagery.
'Somebody I used to love asks me who Marie Curie is' by Carly Rubin which discusses Marie Curie and how important of a figure she is and should remain to be.

The only thing I feel that would make this collection even more wonderful than what is already is, would be some illustrations and imagery that fit well with the poems. I felt like it was missing some detail throughout this collection.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publishers for this wonderful ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this collection - two of my favourite things, science and poetry.

The poems themselves are brilliant and varied, the book has little cut up sections dedicated to different themes and areas of physics. This tickled all my favourite interests and I'm honestly jealous I wasn't a contributing poet!

The only slight thing that was off putting is that several of the poems say "he (or she)" which, as a poet, wasn't necessary, and as a female, took me out of the world for an eye roll. I'm pretty sure this was also only done by male contributors- please have a think about isolating your audience.

Other than that, absolutely stellar. Thoroughly enjoyed and would read again.

✨The Heartbeat of the Universe by Emily Hockaday✨

5🌟

(ARC PROVIDED BY NETGALLEY IN EXCHANGE FOR HONEST REVIEW)

Y’all already know I’m a sucker for poems. But tie astronomy and all things universe/space related and put that into beautiful poems- it’s sweet music to my ears.

These collections of poems have made me think of humanity, our own planet and the vastness of space in a whole new view and I can’t thank NetGalley enough for providing this ARC for me.

Thank you to Interstellar Flight Press an NetGalley for providing me with an E-Arc.

There were a number of pieces I liked in this collection, including:

-Somebody I used to Love Asks me Who Marie Curie is by Carly Rubin
-Time Traveler at the Grocery Store Circa 1992 by Kristian Macaron
-Taxi Ride by Ian Goh
-The Dogs of the Soviet Space Program by Christopher Cokinos
-Abyss Inside our Young Hearts by Yuliia Vereta
-Small Certainties by Sara Polsky
-In Theory by Rebecca Siegel

I was compelled most of all by the many scientific and speculative poems set in the context of mundane, domestic life.

The organization of the anthology made sense to me. It is broken up into five section on the topics of: sciences & mathematics, time travel, quantum physics, contact with otherworlds and astronomy.

There is much to enjoy about this collection, however, there were a number of poems that would begin on an interesting topic and then devolve into cliche romantic metaphor. I wish there would have been fewer of these pieces.

A collection of science fiction and adjacent poetry, The Heartbeat of the Universe includes some of my favorite writers. Yet it failed to really come together for me. There were individual poems which touched me deeply. Perhaps the collection would have benefited from artwork - there are years of cover art to choose from. Still, I would pick this up again. It perfectly dovetails with my interests. I would be thrilled if someone gave it to me as a gift. I’m enthusiastic about the idea of the collection. I know much thought went into the organization and structure of the collection but it did not feel - to me - like the individual poems were in conversation with each other. And yet, I will read as many of these collections as someone wants to publish. Thank you to the editor, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC.

Really loved this, almost cried at multiple poems. Wanted to share a load of them with my wife because I loved them so much!

The Heartbeat of the Universe is a poetry collection with the common theme of science, and in particular those scientific fields declined to space.

There were lots of metaphors to find – which I rather liked, especially if they verged on subjects such as time travel or parallel universes... at least until they turned too heavy-handed – and different subjects of interest (scientific history, its people, some animals, and even the periodic table!).
Unfortunately the same couldn't be said of the order they were presented in, if such even existed. I appreciate some kind of sequitur in a collection, a logic (be it chronological or thematic or whatever else), some point-A to point-B to point-Z, if you catch my hint, but those poems were quite scattered. At the very least, even if I don't really get the most of the poems (I can honestly say I enjoyed a little more than ¼ of them), I still want to savor the fluidity of the text.

An interesting thing I found was how some of the verses reminded me of some sci-fi short stories I've read:
- Small Certainties by Sara Polsky > Your Orisons May Be Recorded by Laurie Penny;
- Music Remembers by Ashok K. Banker > The Last Truth by AnaMaria Curtis;
- First Contact by Stuart Greenhouse > The Anthropologist by Kathleen M. Sydney;
still, it's highly probable it was not intentional on the part of the authors, more of a Forer effect on my part.
What was intentional, however, was the one poem with a reference to Robert Frost – but it seemed more of a straight-up copy-and-paste-while-changing-some-words than a homage.

This was beautiful. Like - get up to share the poem you just read with the nearest possible person type of work.

I had high hopes from the description, and this collection was everything I wanted and more. I don't want to name favourites as the list goes on, but also different poems struck me for different reasons. Because of the expanse of symbolism and themes - there is something in here for literally anyone with a soul.

I am in debt to any book that can make me cry. I will be re-reading this for a long time.

This was a gripping read and I was intrigued by the characters. I will look out for more by this author.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a free arc.
This was a quite nice collection of speculative science poems that I enjoyed.

so i don't usually reach for poetry but i wanted to try something new. this did not disappoint me, but as someone who is not very in-love with sci fi things, i was not the target audience. although, i recognized lots of references and even found myself pondering the words within this book. the collection itself was very well put together and made sense. i learned new things and understood things in a difference way. i would recommend this book to people who want to try something new and have a love for all things science. reading these beautiful words could change the way certain people think.

As a scifi nerd, I enjoyed myself. As a poetry nerd, I was a bit disappointed by the dearth of interesting poetic forms. There’s a lot of free verse — not that there’s anything wrong with free verse, but it’s a bit static in that regard.

Favorite entries are as follows:

Field Notes by Lola Haskins is an absolute banger, assuming one is comfortable referring to a prose-poem that buries political commentary in descriptions of ant colonies ‘a banger.’ I would assert that it is.

Taxi Ride by Ian Goh has some exceptional imagery of a city in the aftermath of a destructive flood.

Messaging the Dead by Betsy Aoki has a very unsettling take on the concept of AI and/or ghosts in the machine.

Wobble by Richard Schiffman does the thing I like in scifi where the science is an (in this case, directly stated) metaphor for some internal emotional parallel. It’s not particularly subtle but it’s well-phrased and bittersweet.

Overall, I found this to be an enjoyable collection. Pretty much what it says on the tin. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read an advance copy.

In an anthology spanning a decade, the task of shaping a sense of unity amidst diverse voices and themes is masterfully achieved by Editor Emily Hockaday. Hockaday orchestrates a smooth progression of verse even with the multiplicity of contributors. A thematic undercurrent of speculative fiction emerges as the binding force, weaving together disparate threads into a coherent narrative whole. In collections with multiple authors, it's common to find a mix of quality among the poems. While some pieces reached excellence, there are certainly moments of mediocrity or unpolished craftsmanship in The Heartbeat of the Universe. However, these shortcomings don't overshadow the overall strength of the volume.

Standout works include Kristian Macaron's "Time Traveller at the Grocery Store Circa 1992," with its quirky tone and evocative imagery, such as "You press / fingers into the bread loaf. It reminds you / of a body, already gone." Additionally, Bruce Boston's "When Words Take Flight" captivates with lines like "I explode to fractal feathers / beneath a semiotic sky / engraved with cloud runes" which is delightfully surreal. It's worth noting that the themes explored in these poems cater predominantly to enthusiasts of science and science fiction. Readers should anticipate some nerdy language, unconventional connections, and the occasional use of elevated vocabulary. Despite this specificity, and perhaps because of it, the collection offers a captivating journey through musings on physical phenomena and speculative concepts. With my background as a science fiction fan, I found the book quite enjoyable.

This was such a unique collection! The premise of a combination between science fiction and poetry caught my interest immediately and I can say that the book definitely lived up to my expectations. It discusses topics like loneliness, human connection, love and growing up from a fascinating and fresh perspective. Each poem was a mystery waiting to be revealed and I had a lot of fun reading them. Thanks to the publisher for providing me with an arc!

The Heartbeat of the Universe leans into that unexpected affinity between poetry and science as ways of examining the world around us and within us. Its poems run the gamut, from the cosmic to the subatomic, but throughout, they maintain a thoroughly human sense of wonder, vulnerability, and humor. Adding to the experience, editor Emily Hockaday arranges her selections with the precision of a scientist laying out a particularly elegant experiment.

There’s something for every poetic and scientific bent in The Heartbeat of the Universe. For science historians, there are poems that revisit the Chernobyl disaster (“Soft Collision” by Scott E. Green & Herb Kauderer), or reimagine the fate of the space dog Laika (“The Dogs of the Soviet Space Program” by Christopher Cokinos). For hopeless romantics, the poem “Hypothesis/Assertion” by Daniel D. Villani reads like a hyper-intellectual love note that invokes multiverses. For feminists, poems like “How to Go Twelfth” by Mary Soon Lee shine a light on the overlooked accomplishments of women in science.

I adored this collection—including the poems that were entirely too smart for me and my limited science background. The Heartbeat of the Universe reminded me mightily of the nonfiction book Figuring by Maria Popova, which I thought could have been subtitled, “Poets and Astronomers in Love.” That subtitle would fit here too.

My thanks to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for providing me a copy of The Heartbeat of the Universe in exchange for my honest review.

This was an absolutely gorgeous read! As a poet myself, the things that got me into poetry were: speculative poetry and documentary poetics. This volume includes both, along with everything else one might expect from a poetry collection. Beautiful language and imagery, fun poetic forms, breathtaking moments...This book has it all! I found myself highlighting so many lines that I'll come back to when I need to put myself in touch with the universe.

I think that poetry itself deserves more attention, and within that, speculative poetry should be celebrated. I see speculative poetry as a way to bring in readers who may not have realized it was possible to delve into the realms of sci-fi within a poem. For that reason, this book is a perfect read for the avid poetry lover or someone new to the genre! I'm also impressed with the wide range of authors included, and the organization of the anthology that truly leads the reader through a journey. I could tell that the editor was very thoughtful in the creation of this work.