How to Read a Volcano

Readings of the Aetna typically celebrate its scientific virtues while diminishing its qualities as poetry. By exploring the literary aspirations, didactic organization, and persistent textualization of enquiry in the Aetna, this paper argues that the poem seeks to be regarded not as “science in verse” but rather as “poetry as science.” That shift throws light on the poem’s empiricism, its relationship to its didactic predecessors, and the coherence of its diverse contents. The resulting explanation suggests that the Aetna has as much to say about conceptions of poetry, artistry, and the organization of knowledge as it does about first-century science.