Apr

21

Book ‘Em: Universal!

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

April 21, 2008 |

universe.jpgSamuel Johnson, addressing the author of a pastoral poem about the sheep industry, said, “The subject, sir, cannot be made poetic.” Surely that’s not really what he meant, though. Is there any subject that isn’t poetic, especially in the hands of the right poet? As the collection Verse And Universe: Poems About Science And Mathematics demonstrates, there is more than enough poetry in what used to be thought of as two areas of knowledge that were about as far from poetry or art as anyone could get. And yet that’s an old prejudice, and no one that I know of holds it anymore. I’m not even sure whether it was a prejudice anyone ever really did hold, or whether it was just assumed that poets, being artists, should turn their noses up at science and not interest themselves with anything so prosaic as facts. The truth is poetry, science, and mathematics all intersect beautifully. Mathematics is about balance and order, and so are most poetic forms, from the iambic pentameter of blank verse to repetitive forms like the triolet and villanelle. While it certainly didn’t start with him, the prejudice was certainly perpetuated and may have even been cemented by Walt Whitman’s poem When I Heard The Learned Astronomer:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

It’s hard to believe Whitman really felt that way, especially since he really loved new technology, and I’m tempted to think he was just listening to a really lousy lecturer. In a piece for Studio 360, astrophysicist Michael Salamon says he loves that poem even though it bothers him, and that the dry equations are “all pathways to experience a beauty.” While science is objective and poetry is subjective, that doesn’t mean the two have to remain separate.

Editor Kurt Brown addresses the divide between science and art in his introduction to Verse And Universe, saying, “There have always been people on both sides of this divide, however, who are uncomfortable with the situation as it stands…The human mind may not be as fractured and compartmentalized as we tend to believe.” And yet Verse And Universe doesn’t read so much like an attempt to push back against the idea that poets have a problem with science as it is a celebration of science using poetry, and, for anyone familiar with contemporary poetry, there are a lot of names here who aren’t that surprising: Jorie Graham, Thomas Lux, Brenda Hillman, and John Updike are just a few of the eighty different poets who use science as a pathway. Almost as a response to Whitman, here are the final lines of Pattiann Rogers‘ poem Achieving Perspective:

And nothing at all separates our bodies
From the vast emptiness expanding, and I know
We are sitting in our chairs
Discoursing in the middle of the blackness of space.
And when you look at me
I try to recall that at this moment
Somewhere millions of miles beyond the dimness
Of the sun, the comet Biela, speeding
In its rocks and ices, is just beginning to enter
The widest arc of its elliptical turn.


Comments

4 Comments so far

  1. Commander Mommy on April 21, 2008 8:35 pm

    This is one book of verse that I will be purchasing. I’m a poet at heart and a scientist by nature. How can one not find the glory and the poetry in discovering the way things work? Beauty is not only skin deep, it is so much more!

    Though I have to differ from one thing: Science, at its absolute best, is subjective. What gives the scientist the drive and the creativity and the curiousity? His subjective mind. Only when the subjective genius is unleashed can the objective tenacity take over and discover how something works, or should work. I’m willing to bet that the greatest academic minds of the centuries did every bit as much daydreaming as the artists.

  2. poetry forms | Lasts information on April 22, 2008 10:06 am

    […] Book ‘Em: Universal!The truth is poetry, science, and mathematics all intersect beautifully. Mathematics is about balance and order, and so are most poetic forms, from the iambic pentameter of blank verse to repetitive forms like the triolet and villanelle …Just Write - http://just-write.contentquake.com […]

  3. Christopher Waldrop on April 22, 2008 12:39 pm

    Actually science at its absolute best strives for objectivity. Subjectivity may be behind the drive and creativity and curiosity (for instance I happen to find cephalopods absolutely fascinating and beautiful but not everyone does). What I think you’re saying is that scientific pursuits are subjective, but the goal–an accurate understanding–is objective.

  4. Commander Mommy on April 22, 2008 9:23 pm

    Well, yes. That’s what I said. :-p I just forgot to say it RIGHT. Subjectivity drives the need for objectivity.

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