Coronology is a compendium of the crowns we bear, from the asbestos crown that insulates our thoughts to the zeitgeist crown, “a collective rather than an individual illumination,” and provides pertinent information concerning crown birth, crown anatomy, the medical treatment of crowns, and more. The jailbreak crown, the quintet crown—you—you’ll meet them all here, alphabetized for your convenience.

Author: Claire Bateman
Paperback, 2009, 32 pages
ISBN-10: 0982546211
ISBN-13: 978-0982546215

About the Author

Claire Bateman is a prolific poet with nine books of poetry and counting: Locals (Serving House Books, 2012), Coronology (a chapbook, single long poem, Serving House Books, 2009), The Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan, 1991), Friction (Eighth Mountain, 1998), At the Funeral of the Ether (Ninety-Six Press, 1998), Clumsy (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2003, and Leap (New Issues, 2005), Coronology (and other poems) (Etruscan Press, 2010), and Wonders of the Invisible World (42 Miles Press, 2023). She has been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and a Surdna Fellowship. Claire has taught at Clemson University and Chattanooga State University, and at summer writing conferences such as Bread Loaf and Mount Holyoke.

In her collection, Coronology, Claire Bateman uses the form of a dictionary to create another world, even another style of poetry. Her unique use of language has a luminous quality and texture, underpinned by seductive wit and lyrical delicacy. Each poem walks a tightrope with perfect balance between elegance and accessibility. I think of Claire Bateman as a clinician of beauty, a cataloger of brilliance.

—Nin Andrews

In this marvelously entertaining chapbook of prose poems, the human brainpan comes face-to-face with one of its funniest and most inventive chroniclers. Claire Bateman is like some secret agent of evolutionary biology: her writing hopes to change our DNA and help us love our strange little heads. If, as the French say, the brain is the antenna for the mind, then she is receiving the clearest of broadcast signals from the galaxy of crazy wisdom.

—David Rivard