Anatomic

A chemical autobiography that lays bare the relationship between the outside and inside of bodies in our current "petroculture."

The poems of 'Anatomic' have emerged from biomonitoring and microbiome testing on the author's body to examine the way the outside writes the inside, whether we like it or not. Adam Dickinson drew blood, collected urine, swabbed bacteria, and tested his feces to measure the precise chemical and microbial diversity of his body. To his horror, he discovered that our "petroculture" has infiltrated our very bodies with pesticides, flame retardants, and other substances. He discovered shifting communities of microbes that reflect his dependence on the sugar, salt, and fat of the Western diet, and he discovered how we rely on nonhuman organisms to make us human, to regulate our moods and personalities. Structured like the hormones some of these synthetic chemicals mimic in our bodies, this sequence of poems links the author's biographical details (diet, lifestyle, geography) with historical details (spills, poisonings, military applications) to show how permeable our bodies are to the environment. As Dickinson becomes obsessed with limiting the rampant contamination of his own biochemistry, he turns this chemical-microbial autobiography into an anxious plea for us to consider what we're doing to our world -- and to our own bodies.

A Minor Excretory OrganSpecimen; By All Means, Sure, Certainly, Absolutely; Specimen; Northern Planing Mills; Hormone; Gut-Brain Axis; Specimen; Outside Inside; Disruptors; Hormone; You Might Not Think That You Do This, But You Do; Hormone; Specimen; Scale; Hormone; Heterotrophies; Hormone; The Cleanse; A Bromide; Specimen; Parts Per Billion; Hormone; The Women Favoured the Smell of Shirts from Men Whose Immune Systems Were Most Different from Their Own; Hormone; Interkingdom Signalling; Specimen; Hormone; Pack Your Bags; Hormone; Spectrum; The Sun Can Kill You; Vitamin D; Meat Sweats.

I Hope You Are Feeling BetterHormone; Independent Variables; Specimen; Hormone; Metabolic Poetics; Notes; Acknowledgments; About the Author.