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I was reading a poem called "Darwin" by Lorine Niedecker (I'm in a poetry course that includes an anthology of American poetry).  For some reason, I can't find it online.  Google has rarely let me down like this.  But I think the poem was really interesting in relation to the course and to this week's reading in particular.  One of the things the poem brings up (it quotes Darwin's letters home during his voyage at points) how the process of coming up with the theory of evolution and natural selection was so incredibly difficult and time consuming.  People think of the theory as a stroke of brilliance, like an idea that popped fully formed into Darwin's head.  But reading Origins, as well as this poem, opened my eyes to how intense the work was that necessarily preceded the theory's existence.  There is no "eureka" moment, only years of back-breaking hypothesis and experimentation.