In a world defined by silos and specialization, Alice Major's Triangularity is a profound and timely mingling of big ideas about how things fit together. Religion and science are often considered separate, even antagonistic, ways of thinking about existence, but in these essays and interspersed poems, an experienced poet explores her own life and craft to find connecting lines that join them.
Based on her lifelong curiosity about faith and science, Major suggests a geometry where poetry is a hypotenuse stretched between these subjects-a geometry in which we can think about topics like "belief" or "creation" from different angles and see the shared space they enclose. Major asks how this interplay of disciplines can help illuminate day-to-day lives and the very act of making art. Triangularity is for anyone yearning to reconnect with our shared human needs: peace, beauty, justice, equality, good community, a quiet soul, and personal truth.
Triangularity explores the intersections of poetic forms, science, and spirit, using moments from the author's life as counterpoint to ideas about research, ecology, and reconciliation.
Triangularity explores the intersections of poetic forms, science, and spirit, using moments from the author's life as counterpoint to ideas about research, ecology, and reconciliation.
"Alice Major looks to 'decide what is true' in an increasingly complicated world. Her ways of understanding where good is, where hope lies, and how to build a hopeful creative community welcome the reader into the text. The author uses her own uncertainty as a way forward, a comforting thought when certainty seems in short supply." Tanis MacDonald, author of Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female
"Alice Major is a wonderfully inquisitive poet. In these lively essays on science, religion, and poetry, her curiosity and delight in surprise help readers 'make sense of the world.' Triangularity is a welcome addition to an astonishing body of work." Nicholas Bradley, University of Victoria # 3 on the Edmonton Non-fiction Bestseller List, August 9, 2026 # 5 on the Edmonton Non-fiction Bestseller List, August 16, 2026
• About this book-and its title
• In the beginning
• World spelled backwards
• The wide and starry sky: Falling in love with the poem
• Address: 1959
Confessional: Shame and the battered heart
• Kore
Conversation repair
• Kiyam
Creation myths
• The number gods: Seven
Credo: believing words
• Saint Bridgid and the Blind Nun Dara
Scansion and science
• From Welcome to the Anthropocene
Let us count the ways: Love lines
• Sonnet for Valentines
Symmetries of translation
• Symmetries of dilation
• Currents
• Afterword
• We have elegies to write
• d2 = (X-x)2 + (Y-y)2 + (Z-z)2 – c(T-t)2
• Eternity the other night
• This is my mortichnium
• Notes and sources
• References
