The poems in Working Hypothesis celebrate curiosity. They revel in the discoveries of Natural Science as well as the hoaxes and scientific jokes that litter our history of knowing. These are the product of Charles Malone’s rural upbringing and connection to the natural world, his family's passed-down bookishness, and his mother’s work as a chemist. Poems like “Beneficial Insects” and “Papilio Ecclipses” look to the intersections of these ideas with our most intimate personal relationships. The poem “About the River” comes from Malone’s work using poetry writing in the community to talk about the history of the Cuyahoga River. These pieces balance intellectual searching with domestic moments of childhood, marriage, and the making of a home.
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“A generous skepticism about the nature of knowledge, paired with an abiding care about nature itself, undergirds Charlie Malone’s frank, witty, and deeply searching Working Hypothesis. Child of scientists, witness to the many ways in which knowledge so often becomes a means of hiding from the world rather than its means of revelation, these poems take upon themselves an ancient command, to know thyself, understanding all the while, that such an ideal might not exist. Science and reason cannot save us from our situation—not only the impending doom of climate crisis, but the more quietly troubled fates of our personal lives. But Malone also trusts that knowledge begins in wonder, and if one can learn to undermine our self-seriousness with serious play, we might move beyond the facts into more startlingly realized realms: “for a long time, none of us understood / that the work we do on our spirits / isn’t a lonely work.” The genial spirit of these poems is ample proof of the claim—read the book, and you’ll find yourself less alone. “
-Dan Beachy-Quick, Author of Variations on Dawn and Dusk
“Life is a science without answers in Charlie Malone’s stunning collection of poems rooted in the naturalness of human existence. Home as a science lab, the Cuyahoga River on fire, the frosting of garlic bulb fields, a son’s voice reaching out to tell an absent father about the bachelor buttons in the ditch, rubber bands between teeth, an homage to Robert J. Brown, cell tissues reduced to inky carbon, reciprocity as a language, stories baring scars and casualties, what poetry must leave out, the avoidance of the hassle of masculinity, mother as chemist, and the feeling of failure converge in a world that explores how we absorb & resist. These are poems in search of possibility. A wanting of that which is absent juxtaposed against a vivid and vibrant world that simultaneously taxes and excites our minds and physicality of being. These are poems of wonder. The place where wonder meets the restless incompletion of a life in progress. Of course we are an experiment. “Let me show you,” says the voice in “The Chemist’s Son.” We are natural beings and our lives are wild and unfurling. Alive, alive, alive is exactly what these poems are. Above all, Malone contemplates the faith in our naturalness and faith in how things turn out in absence— absence of any equation, script, paternal figure, directions, or hoax that defines how a life evolves.”
-Felicia Zamora, Author of Body of Render