Edward D. Nudelman

OFFICIAL BIO

EDWARD NUDELMAN is a poet and retired cancer research scientist. His latest collection of poetry, "Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives," published by Kelsay Books (2023), nearly reached Amazon sales Top 100 in the first week, and has been met with extremely favorable reviews (see below). "Thin Places," is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2024. "Out of Time, Running," (2014) was published by Harbor Mountain Press (first poem in this book was nominated for a Pushcart Prize). "What Looks Like an Elephant," Lummox Press (2011), was awarded SECOND PLACE for Book of the Year by IndieLit Awards in 2011. "Night Fires," (2009) was a semifinalist for the Journal Award ("The Wheeler Prize) given by OSU Press. Nudelman's poetry has appeared in Rattle, American Journal of Poetry, Cortland Review, Valparaiso Review, Chiron Review, Atlanta Review, Evergreen Review, Floating Bridge, Plainsongs, Penwood Review, Poets and Artists, and many more. Awards include: finalist in 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, honorable mention in 2019 Passager Poetry Contest and more. A Native Seattleite, Nudelman is a recently retired cancer research scientist with over 80 papers in top-tier cancer journals. His poems often reflect a nuance between linear and nonlinear functions, paradoxes, and the often delicate threads of certainty and doubt. Edward Nudelman, owns and operates a rare book business (est. 1980) in Seattle, where he lives in Seattle, with his wife, dog and five ducks.

PRAISE FOR EDWARD NUDELMAN

"Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives," Kelsay Books, 2023“

"'I liked my career in biochemical oncology, but the nomenclature bored me, lacking the spice of common names and not conveying the architecture of discovery and wonder.’ Therefore, Edward Nudelman became a poet. One of the great pleasures of this collection is seeing the natural world as inflected by his scientist’s mind and poet’s heart. The result is a poetry unlike anything I’ve read before. Nudelman’s ‘architecture of discovery and wonder’ reveals, again and again, the miraculous, the revelatory, in the ordinary world around us. He shows us what we’ve missed. And isn’t that why we came to poetry in the first place? Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives is one of the freshest, most bracingly intelligent books I’ve read in a very long time."

—George Bilgere. George has published six collections of poetry, including Imperial (2014); The White Museum (2010), which was awarded the Autumn House Poetry Prize; Haywire (2006), which won the May Swenson Poetry Award; and The Good Kiss (2002), which was selected by Billy Collins to win the University of Akron Poetry Award, and many others. He has won numerous awards, including the Midland Authors Award and a Pushcart Prize.

“Mixing the nomenclature of science with poignant metaphors drawn from the natural world, personal experience and acute observation, Edward Nudelman’s Nonlinear Equations for Growing Better Olives is lit by wings, by fish, by lizards, by trout, by blackbirds and all manner of beings. A biochemical oncologist, Nudelman’s clinical vocabulary makes a contrapuntal contrast with his accessible imagery as he dives deep into an exploration of the nature of the universe and into his complex relationship with his family. His poems circle back and project ahead in time and space. Nudelman’s imagery is infused with beauty. In “Unhinged,” he writes, “Morning sun blisters through a window—alpine/rivers fill with trout—the current, a rippling arrow.” Nudelman is at his finest in lines like, “Archimedes grabbed/a lever, and the Earth/moved an inch off center./Gravity has you by your feet/but your heart remains/a secret in the sway/of cloud and pillar.” I greatly admire his deft use of music in lines like, “I’ve strummed a palm leaf to silence/my mind’s electronic hissing, jettisoned/trigonometry in favor of a few visions/describing the lure of commonplace.” This unique book of poems strikes all the right chords, making an important addition to any library.”

—Pamela Uschuk. Pamela's seven poetry collections include Crazy Love (American Book Award), Blood Flower, and Refugee. Translated into twelve languages, her work appears widely in Poetry, Ploughshares, and others. Awards include Best of the Web, Dorothy Daniels Award (National League of American PEN Women), prizes from Ascent, New Millenium & Amnesty International. She is the Editor of Cutthroat Poetry Journal, and other journals.

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"Thin Places," forthcoming from Salmon Poetry, 2024

In “Thin Places,” Ed Nudelman, a retired cancer researcher, brings a scientist’s keen observation and balanced equanimity to bear on our “ordinary,” if sometimes painful, human experiences. With gentleness and patience, Nudelman watches the doings of fruit flies, humming birds, and moles, as well as his mother’s progress into the wilds of Alzheimer’s disease. This book is, by turns, comic, joyful, and heart-breaking.”

—Rae Armantrout. One of the founding members of the West Coast group of Language poets, and author of more than ten collections of poetry, including Versed (2009), which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and Wobble (2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Armantrout is a professor emerita at University of California, San Diego, where she taught for more than 20 years and was the longtime director of the New Writing Series.

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"Out of Time Running," Harbor Mountain Press, 2014

"Before reading, "Each shivering microliter bifurcates equal parts myth and discovery," I would not have guessed science could be so beautiful or poetry so beautifully scientific. For all their courageous, hopeful, wise and soulful assertions, confident voce, music and metaphors, these poems play at the edges of the Grand Canyon of the 'is' we cannot wholly know, lofting their melodies over the cliff—or as Edward Nudelman has it, 'the oak... buckles, while the poem moves forward, balancing on its good leg."

—April Ossmann. Author of EVENT BOUNDARIES (a 2018 VT Book Award finalist) and ANXIOUS MUSIC (both from Four Way Books), recipient of a 2013 Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant, and Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Award.

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"What Looks Like and Elephant," Lummox Press, 2011

"Few poets can steer between generosity and insight or aphorism and wonder with ease, but Edward Nudelman’s book is one of those rare books. He makes the intangible tangible. He turns afterthought into deep thought. Above all, he unpacks certainties into reasonable doubts. This is a keen book and a special one."

—David Bespiel, poet, The Book of Men and Women, 2009 (Named 'Best Poetry of the Year' by The Poetry Foundation), past poetry reviewer Washington Post, NY Times.