A Unique Reprint: PLUTONIC SONNETS by ROBERT GRABER

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Published: Sunday, 23 November 2025 06:37

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Plutonic Sonnets

Robert Bates Graber

Golden Antelope Press is re-issuing a book whose original publisher, “Publish America,” went out of print shortly after the book came out.  We normally do not re-issue published books, but made an exception for this one.  It deserves to stay in print, and the author is a friend, colleague, and neighbor.  Graber's sense of humor is sometimes wicked as he turns into a sonneteer celebrating the passions and foibles of famous astronomers.    

ISBN 978-1-952232-98-5 pb; $19.95; Release July 1, 2025

Poetry

Synopsis:

Anthropologist Graber's 165 sonnets contain a variety of "digs"-- the kind which unearth connections between molten lava and ancient deities, the kind comedians use to bury politicians, the kind scholars do as they study the role of rivalry or sexism in the development of telescopes, or naming of planets. After Pluto got plutoed, a friend asked, "Does plutonium still get to be an element?" and Graber found himself digging into fields full of fertile theories and fascinating people.

As a seeker and maker of patterns, the poet maintains a wry awareness of how metaphors work. "Gravity" can apply to planets orbiting stars, inventors orbiting patrons, suitors circling potential brides. It can mean stability, or loss of the ability to move. "Building" has an equally wide range of analogues: rich men build observatories; astronomers build theories; mythic deities build both chaos and wisdom. Puns are part of the plan, too, involving twists of language—moments of respite, detours that remind readers how words bend meaning. The god/planet named Uranus stars in both serious and vaguely scatological sonnets in this collection.

There is a learning curve here: readers who know little about mythology or astronomy might want to have their cell phones handy to provide context. "Look deeper if things don't add up" says Sonnet LXVI. Still, even for readers who don’t google Caroline Herschel-- who "showed that knowing knows no gender"-- the poems demonstrate humans and gods making decisions, often based on faulty assumptions and with flawed motives. Graber’s astronomers make patterns, study the skies, name and analyze chemical elements. (But wasn’t Galileo heartless when he sent his daughters off to nunneries?)

The sonnets are arranged in roughly chronological order around particular scientists and their discoveries, theories, strengths and foibles; but there's a cyclic sensibility at work, too, as theories get scorched and revised, and mythic names tie modern to ancient ways of wondering. This dimension gets its fullest development in XCVI-CXIV, eighteen sonnets presenting a deconstructed-reconstructed version of the "rape" of Proserpina by Pluto, god of the underworld. That story echoes in poems about recent astronomers who searched and adjusted data until Pluto shrank from god-sized to powerless dwarf. (Why do huge planets sometimes orbit very small stars?) There’s much to learn—and the learning is fun.

Biography:

Robert Bates Graber ("Rob") is an emeritus professor of anthropology at Truman State University. Author of four scholarly books and many articles, he lives with his wife, Rose, in Kirksville, MO, where he enjoys backyard astronomy and classical guitar.