In Between

About the Book

The poems of In Between reflect how science and the way one thinks about it impact our lives. For example, how the way the brain works moves us in strange, unpredictable ways, how we are sometimes slaves to our own neurotransmitters that affect how we think, how we feel, how we love, and what we dream about. Relativity is not only a theory of Einstein’s, it’s also a personal and sometimes troubling way that we make decisions about who we are, who we love, how we deal with conflict, and how we deal with thoughts of our own mortality. These poems are a travel log of one individual’s journey through these troubled waters, modulated by a broad but often incomplete knowledge of how and why scientific principles guide us in often unconscious and unpredictable ways that are sometimes dangerous to our own peace of mind and well being. But there is always a glimmer of hope built into these reflections.

About the Author

R.W. Ruddon was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Detroit and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan. In addition to Michigan, he has lived in Maryland, Nebraska, and New Jersey. In each of these states, he learned to appreciate their unique natural beauty, which he has captured in his poems. Most of his summers were spent at a lake in Michigan near Ann Arbor. Many of the poems in “In Between” capture and reflect this environment. The poems in this volume also represent the author’s thoughts about the impact that science has in our world. Himself a scientist, the author has spent much of his professional life trying to understand the personal and the cultural role that science has in our lives and how the explosion of knowledge sometimes makes us feel on the outside looking in at the inner circles of a world that are difficult to probe. At times, we may feel caught “in between” our personal inner circle and those competing circles of our environment. The author has previously published “Green Hills,” an anthology of poems about the beauties of nature observed in a pastoral setting of the lake country in Michigan.