Loren Eiseley – Commentary, Biography, and Remembrance

Born, raised, and educated in Lincoln, Nebraska, Loren Eiseley (1907–77) was a highly respected writer and poet best known for explaining complex scientific concepts in poems easily read and understood by the general public. Much of his work covered anthropology, ecology, and human evolution, topics in which Eiseley himself was extensively educated. Loren Eiseley collects essays and remembrances of his work by friends and academics. Throughout this volume, Eiseley is praised as a brilliant thinker, accomplished writer, and esteemed man of science who drew inspiration from his midwestern upbringing and worked to bring science into the mainstream at a time when its understanding was restricted largely to those working directly in the field. Decades after his departure from the world he sought to understand, Eiseley is lauded for beautifully joining the worlds of science and literature.

Loren Eiseley is the author of numerous books, including All the Strange Hours, The Firmament of Time, and The Night Country, all available in Bison Books editions.


Hilda Raz, a professor of English and women’s and gender studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is the Glenna Luschei Endowed Editor of Prairie Schooner. She is the author of numerous poetry collections, most recently All Odd and Splendid and Trans, and the coauthor (with Aaron Raz Link) of What Becomes You, available in a Bison Books edition.

 

Scott Slovic is a professor of literature and environment at the University of Nevada-Reno and has authored or edited several books, including What’s Nature Worth?: Narrative Expressions of Environmental Values.

 

Contributors include: Naomi Brill, E. Fred Carlisle, Erleen Christensen, Gale E. Christianson, Peter Heidtmann, Ben Howard, Howard Nemerov, and Caroline Werkley.