By Anne McCrary Sullivan. Saint Julian Press, 2023.

The poems of Notes from a Marine Biologist’s Daughter honor a mother’s ways of learning, seeing, and being in relation with the world. Some of the poems are explicitly about the mother while others embody forms of attention and perception that are the mother’s living legacy. This work is grounded in close observation of the natural world, often the world of the Everglades and its mangrove wilderness. It is rich in botanical detail and knowledge of ecosystems. Infused throughout is the enduring presence and power of a marine biologist mother.

Anne McCrary Sullivan is a naturalist, wilderness canoeist, and professor emerita of interdisciplinary studies. She is author of five books, the most recent of which is a book of poems, Notes from a Marine Biologist’s Daughter. She has an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in English Education from the University of Florida. She lives on the Florida Gulf Coast.

Praise for Notes from a Marine Biologist’s Daughter

Notes from a Marine Biologist’s Daughter introduces the reader to a rich and varied lexicon of the natural world, its inhabitants, and the poet’s interaction and close relationship with the same.  These poems pay deep attention: to paddling in the Everglades, walking in the neighborhood, and indelible childhood memories.  Nature is a never-ending source of remarkable occurrences for this poet-naturalist.  We have new eyes for our world, reading this enthralled insightful collection.

—K. Alma Peterson. The Last Place I Lived; Was There No Interlude When Light Sprawled the Fen

What an extraordinary book!  It struggles and accepts, it frets and studies, and then, pleased, relaxes into knowing.  It is filled not only with Anne McCrary Sullivan’s knowledge of botany but with loving tributes to her mother and grandmother, memories of her father, lost when she was a girl.  These poems tremble the heart and, at the same time, teach the world — of plants and flowers and trees.  This book opens its arms to the world:  “I am the tree, rooted and sturdy, I am the wind passing through.” // “I am dust, I am desert, my banks overflow with flood.” ​
Anne McCrary Sullivan is a naturalist by temperament and by training, and her responses to the world — and to her foremothers — are large and generous and teach you more about the natural world than you knew you needed:  “Our name is earth.  Our name is sea.  Our name is air.”  It is a pleasure to welcome this extraordinary poet’s new work into the world.

—Deena Linett. When I Was Water; Translucent When Fired

Notes from a Marine Biologist’s Daughter made me want to bow down and tap dance at the same time.  It left me with a powerful (and lasting) feeling that, not only are we surrounded by quiet and not-so-quiet miracles, but we live inside and within a vast, complex, wonderfully inexplicable and explicable Being (called whatever you wish). There’s no pantheism or fancy posturing here.  Just the astounding beauty of reality. This work convinces me that poetry is not at the heart of everything. It is the heart of everything.

​—Patricia Corbus. Finestra’s Window. Winner of the 2015 Off the Grid Poetry Prize