NEW: The Tangled Bank: Love, Wonder, & Evolution has launched!

The anthology, which marks the 150th anniversary of Origin of Species, features over 100,000 words of speculative fiction, poetry, artwork, and essays about evolution.

An international line-up of nearly 50 contributors includes Sean Williams, Brian Stableford, Patricia Russo,  Carlos Hernandez and Anne Bryan. 

Just US$4.99, The Tangled Bank is now available for download as a PDF at http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-tangled-bank-love-wonder-and-evolution/8340048

Check out "Darwin's Daughter" by Christopher Green (a free short story from the anthology)
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/darwins-daughter/8339953

For more information, visit the website, or our Facebook or Twitter pages. 
Tangled Bank Press  http://thetangledbank.com/

 Darwin's worms page

 Darwin had been interested in worms all his life, he thought they were important but people laughed at this idea. He wrote his book on worms when he was over seventy and in poor health but he investigated worms with the curiosity of a child. Do worms hear? He persuaded his wife and son to play the piano and the bassoon to them and watched the worm's reactions. Do worms pull leaves into their burrows by grasping the end or the base of the leaf? Do they find some leaves more attractive than others? He  stayed up at night to watch them. He noticed that worm casts gradually bury the foundations of old buildings. Could they affect large ancient monuments? He went to Stonehenge to look for evidence of worm activity. This poem is a tribute to Darwin's study of the power of these lowly underground animals

                                                                                       MONUMENTAL WORMS

Extract from the introduction to " The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observation on their Habits" by Charles Darwin Published in 1881

'In the year 1869, Mr. Fish* rejected my conclusions with respect to the part which worms have played in the formation of vegetable mould, merely on account of their assumed incapacity to do so much work.
* Gardeners Chronicle, April 17th 1869 p.418

            

He’d show them how a worm could work, he’d delve into their muddy world,

                                                                      and quiz all aspects of their lives.

 He watched them hook their mouths on leaves, prefer the cherry over lime,

                                                                    assess the shape and grasp the point.

Worms deaf to whistle and bassoon, positioned on the piano,

                                                                    responded to the striking keys.

 No eyes, yet they retreat in light, except when sexual passion wrapped

                                                                    their senses in oblivion.

 Stonehenge, that day, no time to muse on mental qualities of worms,

                                                                    he measured slow subsiding stones.

 Small tunneling for countless years might undermine a monolith,

                                                                    and wormy burrows tip the balance -

 topple stones that reach for heaven, those monstrous testimonials

                                                                    to long dead engineers.

 Designs long sunk in mysteries still echoed in the modern air,

                                                                when, faint with heat on Salisbury plain,

 old Darwin understood that soon he'd lie, a fallen monument,

                                                                a work for churchyard worms.

 He thought the village carpenter would frame a simple box for him,

                                                                and he'd repose in homely earth.

             Westminster’s pomp would claim him in the end, but Emma said,
                                                                             ‘I’ll be closer to him here.’

 She walked around the garden in her faded cotton dress,

                                                            where once her spellbound lover delved,

 there he tenderly unveiled his beloved Gaia’s body, gazed

                                                            upon her marvelous supple skin -

 and revealed it’s delicately moulded and continually renewed -

                                                        through the guts of endless worms.

                                                        *  *  *

 Anne Bryan    

P.S.Here's a link to an interesting wormy web page from New Zealand.

You may  print any poems or prose by Anne Bryan for your own use or to pass on to a friend, but please don't copy the poems or prose into assignments, magazines, newsletters or web sites without permission or acknowledgement.  Ask for permission by E mail  

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