And Yet It Moves

In And Yet It Moves, the poet is an archeologist of mourning rediscovering that

assaults on science and reason are not new phenomenon. Gallagher follows

Petrarch who spawns a new lyric in part inspired by lost texts, and who motivates

'book hunters' of the Renaissance to search for the buried as well. The world

changed when Poggio Bracciolini discovered Lucretius' On the Nature of Things in

a Benedictine library. Lucretius' poem is a meditation of the universe as infinite

numbers of atoms wandering randomly through space with no master plan

whatsoever. The book birthed humanist philosophy, masterworks such as the

Birth of Venus, and inspirations for Galileo Galilei. When Galileo's patrons the

powerful Medici rose to the Papacy, they chose their power over science and

reason-sentencing and silencing Galileo for life for proving that the earth

revolved around the sun. Digging with his pen, Gallagher brings these stories

back in 'talking sonnets' as if ditching the Latin for the more colloquial Italian of

the people that came into form during the era. Upon his sentencing, Galileo's is

said to have uttered 'Eppur si muove,' knowing that the truth will eventually

prevail.