The Outrageous Inner Lives of Plants:Abortion Poetics in Abraham Cowley’s Plantarum Libri Duo (Two Books of Plants)

Abraham Cowley’s expansive Latin poem, Plantarum Libri Duo (1662) isone of the most elusive ‘scientific poems’ of an era that sought in suchwriting not to replicate what prose could say on the matter, and still lessto serve any didactic or explanatory purpose. The poem, translated as‘Of Plants’ (1689), includes in its lengthy second book, an animateddebate on gynaecology, menstruation and abortion, all considered byand from the perspective of the plants involved: a collection of aborti-facients and emmenagogues. It is at one and the same time, borderlineabsurd and wholly serious, even while, in tone, it is a long way from theburlesque so commonly encountered in the era’s poetry. On the con-trary, its account of the always fraught medical, social and emotionaltensions around abortion make it the most frank and sympatheticdiscussions of the subject in early modernity. This essay looks atwhat, until recently, was a wholly neglected work and asks howCowley understands the tasks and parameters of a poem thatenmeshes its scientific subject matter within such rhetorical, dramaticand generic complexity.