I’d like to open a discussion on the recent enthusiasm for scientific words: promoted by the incoming editor of poetry news last year, current everywhere, and notable even before the 80s when Ted Hughes produced his photon-tipped rod, in tales from Ovid.

10 years or so ago, in the wake of disappointment at the completed mapping of the human genome – more an index than an book, they tell me, and less opportunities than expected for copyright, (bloody cheek) – the research giants funded many collaborations with the arts community: a social stop-gap, fun and because art doesn’t matter, good press all round. It appears to me this movement has at last reached the poetic world (!) and conjures up the same sci-art question, is it art?

Some poets, being scientists, have a vocabulary at their disposal which is bound to leave the layperson behind. And the scientist, with the religious adept, may well have profound insights into the balance of life - which is no seesaw, but carries signs of the double helix, spirals, indeed the cross: and poetry is all about insight. So obscurity doesn’t necessarily fail a poem: we can listen with our souls. But ‘though we’re very modern and like good words, as poets & non-scientists, are we right to embrace this magic in scientific words?

Crumbs - I'm not entirely sure I understand the question, but I'll have a go.

I'm not that aware of recent enthusiasm for scientific words in poetry - though that could be down to my lack of reading. Maybe you could point us to some articles or kinds of poetry that you are referencing?

Perhaps you are suggesting that poetry will suffer a similar fate to the art world - and by that I mean the paint and canvas kind....

Call me old fashioned, but when I look around many modern art galleries, I despair at what is called art. There seems to be no attempt to create beauty, anything lasting, or anything meaningful. The art world seems to have got wrapped up in its need to be original - to come up with something that hasn't been thought of before - it's all conceptual and up its own arse. The end result is often something that has been thrown together in no time. Even when it's something that has taken time, it can be extremely tedious to look at.

Can poetry be just about words thrown together with no attention to beauty or meaning? Perhaps this is what you are asking? The same question would be relevant to scientific and non scientific poetry. For me the answer would always be no. A poem has to engage me for it to resonate. That's obviously a personal opinion though and plenty of people seem happy to read, write and listen to obscure poetry that sometimes doesn't even sound nice :)

thanks John, Isobel,

I think it does come down to meaning, and throwing together words won't do it. Now, I'd probably look up eutectic - if I came across it in a poem I liked, and that engages and resonates. What I would resist is the use of scientific words for the sake of a fashion. The language changes, and fashion is fine, but a scientific flare does seem to be the declared thing, and I don't like to see it prescribed –

okay Isobel, this from a recent WOL news item and the nearest example to hand. I wouldn't want to single out the writer, there are plenty more examples around, and this has sound and charm, but I find myself retreating into the usual, savage mutterings:


the smoulder

of black rosettes
a zoo of sub-atoms
I try to tame –

tritium, lepton, anti-proton.
They collide
as if smashed inside

a particle accelerator.
But it's just Aramis sleeping,
twitching himself back

to the jungle, where he leaps
into the pool of a spiral
galaxy, to catch a fish.

2.
Later, the keeper tells me
Aramis has had surgery
for swallowing

a hose–head...


I'm uncomfortable about putting forward a legitimate piece of writing as an example of something I probably dislike - I daresay it can edited out if I'm trampling on anybody's toes: but what do you think?

LOL - yes we are on dangerous ground I suppose. I'll let Greg, our editor decide whether it's a cause for concern since he handles all the news items. Your example sounds like surreal poetry to me - that just happens to have used scientific language.

Anything that makes me have to constantly google for meaning is a bit of a turn off, to he honest with you. I don't mind the odd bit - but am too short on time to spend ages looking for meaning, where it might not exist.

I wouldn't go out and buy a book of surreal poetry for that reason but I can enjoy it occasionally, if it's done very well and there is a ghost of meaning in it.

I really don't see poetry using scientific words as anything different to poetry that make lots of classical references. The average Joe Bloggs would have to do a lot of research before he could understand either. I suppose it's all about the spirit of the poem. It's hard to put your finger on it really. Some poems are just genuinely written by clever people with a great depth of general knowledge. For them, I suppose, such allusion is natural and adds to the subject matter. Such stuff might also be more enjoyable for readers of a similar mind set.

You do come across stuff though that just feels pretentious - like the poet is deliberately setting out to exclude most of the readership or prove something. Let them get on with it, I say. So long as there is always a pool of writers and poetry that says what we want to hear and in the way that you want to hear it, then we can afford to ignore what we dislike.

More worrying for me than the triumph of science, is the steady move of poetry towards the totally biographical. I've always championed the right of people to use poetry for catharsis, but I simply wouldn't want to buy a book that just charts the ups and downs of a stranger's life - I've got enough problems of my own....

Not wishing to hi-jack your discussion thread with my own hobby horse though... :)

yup, I'm not going google for meanings unless i'm pretty convinced they do exist and are worth the effort. Poetry more than any other writing should remind us of our own thoughts - thank you Keats - so I'd resist any unusual words, and to pursue them for there own sake is, daft and should be discouraged.Having said which,poetry is full of surprises and can leave all rules and guides behind.

Your last point - a steady move towards the totally biographical, or autobiographical, is I think a more serious issue than a winging-it science. Poetry written in the first person is fine, but unhappinesses about ma and pa and the last girlfriend and the last boyfriend... doesn't improve the general lot, often makes me sympathetic to the villain of the piece, if it isn't happiness it's usually worse. But, surely we've all had to write up an occasion or two.

Yes, seemed to have moved off the original topic. Should every thread finish with a link to another prceded with "And another thing!"?

Dom.

Yes - I should have said autobiographical. I've written stacks of such stuff because I think life experiences are what inspire poetry. I just wouldn't ever assume that people wanted to buy it.

For me, personal experience only becomes really interesting when the writer can make that next step and see how their feelings and experiences are echoed by others. Taking the personal and making it universal - that's what I enjoy.

Our threads always seem to meander and that's not always a bad thing :)

Going back to your point on science, I think it would make an interesting subject matter for a themed competition one day. We all write and read so much about emotions, it might be a challenge to take ourselves out of that comfort zone - in fact I don't think I could manage it without dragging some pathos in there.

Yes, no bad thing to be given a subject, or a form, out of our normal scope and run with it.

You're exactly right, or, I agree completely, personal experience takes off when it's made universal. That's where poetry counts. Maybe that's where jargon and an awful light of writing on relationships, happy or bitter, are likeliest to fail.

There's plenty to write without them.
Dom.

Dominic, I really liked the little poem which you posted above. The poetic images/metaphors are superb. I think I got enough of the sense, without particular knowledge, to understand the theme. The complexities of science and myth do intertwine, and get whammied by the simple. But, much of the the so-called 'science' is becoming the 'simple' in our modern age. And we older people have to deal with it. It's a good topic.

Isobel, your comments alone are worth the site.

Oh thank you Cynthia! I sometimes worry about saying too much, too often - but I just can't stop myself :)

WOL has been a great outlet for me. There's only so much you can chat to kids before you start to slowly self combust...

I do appreciate your contributions too! And I think it's great when new members like Dominic, get pitched into discussion. We will always need fresh contributors to stop us regulars going stale.

Thought-provoking thread. Poetry - in common with other types of creative expression (song, dance, painting...) has had a role in connecting with what, at any one time, seems magically powerful in taking us behind the scenes of life. As others have said, it has a lot to do with the search for meaning. Science does 'take us behind the scenes' and can have that magically powerful feeling. It comes close to providing meaning by validating the search for truth and providing explanations and 'facts' to inform about things that really matter. Its powerful new discoveries constantly shape our world view - often in ways we don't realise. So it isn't surprising that scientific language and insights finds their way into the feelings and imaginations of poets - it would be surprising if they didn't.

But that is only one half of Dominic's question. The other half seems to be to do with following fashion in poetry. Wind back two hundred years and should the Romantics be criticised for all writing about Nature so much?

I'm not sure, but (thinking aloud)find myself wondering about a sort of 'intensity test'. If there is an intensity behind a poem then I'm interested in it, even if it's fashionable, because it is from the heart. If a poem has been written just to fit in with a fashion, then (perhaps?) it will lack that intensity which is the mark of authenticity.

I find this thread interesting, Regarding the poem: One could (just) imagine the black rosette accelerating into a particulate collision as a sort of imaginative `scientific` kind of figure of speech, but the musketeer, the pool, the jungle, and the galaxy (and particularly the fish) jumble it up entirely. Part two is undecipherable.

Heaven defend us from an increase of scientific words into poetry. Scientists are rightly admired for their discoveries of the various possibilities of the creation we find ourselves in, and the technocrats for the valuable uses they put them to. But the sheer
slickness of popular science and techno-speak makes us blasé about the wonder of what they are actually uncovering and using…

Sometimes - as an exercise - we need to regress into a bit of daft aboriginality in order to get our poetical eyes back.

Such as (to put my money where my mouth is) This:


Pidgin poem about marvel of flight

in birdie tube
folk
joke

Slung
under Wings
pod-things

inside
fire
go higher

Suck
air
flare

out back
hot
air shot

tube
push
rush

until
air zing
over wing

tube
shift
lift

far
fly
into sky.

wonderful?
yup
down…up!

The greatest poems that relate to science, it's ideas and concepts arguably do not realte to its jargon, though scientific words of course make their way into the lexicon.

At the dawn of atomic theory, long before the general theory of relativity allowed us to understand that time is not a universal constant, but can be flexible (at least in its forward rate of travel). A long time before quatum mechanics scuppered Einstein's unifying theory of everything and the great problem of our scientific age (unifying gravity with electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear force into a theory of everything)....

One year after John Dalton's detailed the atom in 1803 (unless i am mistaken on dates), William Blake wrote these four lines at the begining of Auguries of Innocence;

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Has there ever been more beautifully simplistic, far thinking and all encompassing lines on the nature of science?

Not forgetting that heaven can be taken in a poetic sense, with deist, religious or atheistic wonder - at the nature of nature.

I was reading a `scientific` thing that solemnly informs me that: `Oneattosecond is one quillionth of a second`...And this made me think of the differences between poetic, religious, and scientific jargon.

When a poet says:
‘When to the new eyes of thee
All things by immortal power,
Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linkèd are
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star;`

Or a theologian speaks of:`accidents` or `substance`

Neither of them pretend that they are somehow `explaining` what they freely admit to be a mystery.

But when a scientist talks learnedly in `scientific` jargon it seems to be assumed (and also by himself?)That he really is `scientifically`revealing - and explaining - the world to us.

By the way all matter seems to be disappearing more and more into infinitly less that mere air, it makes one wonder.

Quote
But when a scientist talks learnedly in `scientific` jargon it seems to be assumed (and also by himself?)That he really is `scientifically`revealing - and explaining - the world to us.
Unquote

But you're not talking about poetry now are you Harry?

I mean, you've gone beyond the subject matter of poetry and are now just talking in the general about life.

The fact of the matter is science HAS revealed much of the nature of the universe to us. You acknowledge as much when you flick a switch and turn on a light. Without understanding one of the prime forces of the universe, we wouldn't have electricity. We wouldn't have atomic power, without the science that revealed the workings of the atom. Without quantum physics we wouldn't have satnavs or modern air traffic control. Without quantum physics we wouldn't understand how the olafactory system works in biology, just as we wouldn't quite grasp how plants could efficiently power photosynthesis. From medicine, to power, from the cosmologically large to the sub atomically small...science has given us a constant stream of revealed facts about the universe and of nature.

Religion absolutely HAS claimed a great many things, claimed to have revealed much. Unlike science, religion has never empirically proved any of its claims.

Science ridded the world of small pox, gave you the light that keeps you out of dark's night. Name one thing that religion has revealed so emipically?

To decry science in terms of not revealing anything of the universe, in favour of religion- that to me seems very rich and provably untrue.

Religion should leave science alone imo. Relgion is a different sphere. The value of religion(s) one way or another sits outside of science.

Anyone who wants to decry science, should reject all the technological advancments and understanding that derive from it. Sitting in a cave, grubbing about in the dark, clinging to existence and fighting for survival and basics needs without so much as an antibiotic (it wasn't so lomg ago that people could die in agony, from a simple scratch that got infected).

Well ok, please don't sit in a cave or reject these things lol, but do remember just what science and technology has afforded you and your loved ones.

P.S

There are beautiful poems about science, they just don't tend to use scientific jargon, the same way beautiful religious poems don't tend to use theological jargon.

between them, science and religion has wiped out about 75% of anything this planet has that can be considered 'life' I could happily sacrifice my I-pod and bible for a good poem any day of the week :-)
Ian

Chris,
I was talking about poetry- poetry as it effects life in general, and the words used in poetry to express that life.

Perhaps I should have used the term `scientism` instead of scientist. The scientist can claim that while the original discoveries were often serendipitous, (penicillin
and the mould…milk-maids and smallpox vaccine for instance) No one can deny the tremendous material and medical benefits brought about by the resulting scientific technocracy.

What I`m talking about is effect on poetic expression of `scientism` and the habit of some of its less enlightened enthusiasts of assuming that material existence is `all that there is`.

To take your quotation from Blake, Chris:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Or mine:

All things by immortal power,
Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linkèd are
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star;`

Four of the crucial terms: `heaven` `infinity` `eternity` `immortal` are basically philosophical or theological terms, and though still perfectly understandable to the generality should (logically) seem quaintly archaic to the `scientism all there is` advocate.

To take from Dominic`s poem:

tritium, lepton, anti-proton.
They collide
as if smashed inside

a particle accelerator.
But it's just Aramis sleeping,
twitching himself back

The terms: `tritium` `lepton` `anti-proton` and `particle accelerator` are words that are physical - scientist specific and mainly poetically ineffective to the general reader.

You mentioned quantum Physics and I wondered if the language of this might – in time – become part of poetic usage. But when we are told of such things as the `two Slits` the `Light bulb` and that cat in the `Schrodinger equation` or the `Uncertainty Principle` ) we can`t hold out much hope.

Those cutting edge scientists bumping about in the weird and contradictory world of Quantum Physics are indeed disappearing into something infinitely less than mere air.

I am convinced that the language of poetry – whether we like it or not – will always remain quasi-religious and leave all sceptics perfectly free to be sceptical.

Quote
I was talking about poetry- poetry as it effects life in general, and the words used in poetry to express that life.
Unquote

The problem is, I'm not sure there is much clarity in what you are saying Harry. You often attack science in general or use words that relate to science in the pejorative sense. I think you have done that here to some extent, as well as attacking science or rather scientific words in the context of poetry.

Quote
Perhaps I should have used the term `scientism` instead of scientist.
Unquote

Well you could do, but that word or term is a highly debatable pejorative that is very rarely helpful. It is often used in ways that itself escapes rational discourse.

If you mean that you are not disputing the usefulness of science generally - good.

(of course exceptions exist - such as refuting evolution and evolutionary biology - carbon dating? Age of the universe/world? Quantum dynamics? And maybe other key scientific discoveries from which technology is based)

But if you mean you generally accept science and technology and accompanying improvements to mankind's benefit, but you dispute the idea of science in some way in the area of poetry...well I guess that is better than disputing all that science and technology brings.

But it seems to me the logic here is still far from clear. It sounds as though you are arguing some notion of NOMA - Non-overlapping Magisteria.

I fail to see the grounds for any idea like that when speaking about poetry.

Going back to your use of the problematic "scientism"

The definitions afforded the above are as follows;

To indicate the improper usage of science or scientific claims.

This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply, such as when the topic is perceived to be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to claims made by scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as scientific. In this case, the term is a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority.

To refer to "the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry, or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience."

Yet there is no scientific, or empirical claim to "poetry". Neither does science, or are there people on behalf of science demanding deference of any kind. Poetry is not being put under the gaze of science or the scientific method and nobody of a scientific persuasion is denying that poetry cant be interpreted through the lens of philosophy or religious feeling, or spiritualism or...well anything.

So even this pejorative, highly questionable pseudo-word gets us know-where, not even to onto dodgy ground or bad logical arguments that it is quite helpful at reaching.

Science makes no claim on poetry whatsoever.

What you seem to be objecting to is scientific words in poetry. You claim they are specifically poor, one presumes because you think this on some level, makes for an interesting attack on science in some way.

Guessing you think science has it's limitations and so this is as good grounds as any to base that attack. I can't see it myself, why?

Well, because the words largely fail, not because they are scientific, but because they are jargon and opaque. Jargon, words that are not in common operation and not common understood in any lexicon are by definition somewhat limited.

Medical jargon, Theological jargon, etc etc...all jargon generally suffers in the same way. So I don't think you have highlighted a single unique aspect or downfall of science in this context.

Quote
The scientist can claim that while the original discoveries were often serendipitous, (penicillinand the mould…milk-maids and smallpox vaccine for instance) No one can deny the tremendous material and medical benefits brought about by the resulting scientific technocracy.
Unquote

I thought we were dealing with science in the context of poetry?

See this is my point, you slip from points about science i. The context of the scientific world and then in the other area of poetry....slipping between the two.

On the scientific that you comment upon here;

We agree the discoveries have enormously helped human kind...that's good.

"Often Serendipitous" though?

I rather think not!

Apart from the very obvious cherry-picking you have indulged in here. Penicillin may have been accidentally found by Fleming, he did however do virtually nothing with that discovery. It was not until the significant and painstaking work by Howard Florey and his team that penicillin started to be of any real use. Furthermore it had no general application of significance until it was passed onto the scientists in the US who industrialist its path towards common use - via world war two D-day applications.

As for milk maids and small pox. If it was so easy to for Edward Jenner to make the leap to vaccines, then why did nobody make that leap before him? It was in fact Jenner's leap in thinking that led to the first ever vaccine, the word didn't exist before him, etymologically stemming from vacca - literally meaning cow in latin.

Not so easy to think in terms of vaccines, before vaccines existed. Forgetting which, once again Jenner didn't industrialise the vaccine and neither did he eradicate small pox from the planet (the only disease to be eradicated from the world - and one of the biggest killers in human history), the latter accolade going to the Global Smallpox Eradication Program via the World Health Assembly. It was a massive undertaking and many scientists and human aid organisations thought the task to be logistically impossible.

So even with regard to your cherry picked examples, I have to say luck?

To say such things are lucky, well we might as well say all science is lucky. The fact is the laws of nature and the universe are there, they are what they are. Sooner or later they are revealed - but only due to very careful, diligent, painstaking, intelligent and technological advances - via scientific thinking! do we get anywhere!

To put the nature of scientific discovery down to luck or serendipity...no not for me.

Quote
What I`m talking about is effect on poetic expression of `scientism` and the habit of some of its less enlightened enthusiasts of assuming that material existence is `all that there is`.

Even here you are saying more than one thing and confusing issues.

a) the use of scientific words or any jargon and how it relates well or otherwise in a poetic context has nothing to do with scientific claims.

There are zero/no scientific claims in this context.

At no point has science or any scientist come along and said - you, me or anyone else cannot interpret poetry through a philosophical, religious or humanistic lens. So i'm not sure where your claim comes from?

b) Your statement above could be interpreted as a demand that "non material" things exist, such as a God for example.

This has nothing to do with poetry, or any of the poetry or words highlighted.

You would need to elucidate your claim further - detailing precisely what you mean to say in the least ambiguous way possible. You'd need to do that in a way that detailed the strong substantiating grounds for your claim.


...................................


Quote
To take your quotation from Blake, Chris:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Or mine:

All things by immortal power,
Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linkèd are
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star;`

Four of the crucial terms: `heaven` `infinity` `eternity` `immortal` are basically philosophical or theological terms, and though still perfectly understandable to the generality should (logically) seem quaintly archaic to the `scientism all there is` advocate.
Quote

Heaven has entered the popular lexicon and also happens to commonly relate to utopia. Infinity is equally a mathematical/scientific term. Eternity can equally be thought of as "an age" or epoch and certainly has broader scientific applications. All are as you say philosophical words/terms and yes heaven, eternity and immortal are also theological. But then in the first poem the word "grain" is crucial - anyone who studied Blake would know that. And grain relates to how things come to be and of what things are made of, and though naturalistic, this relates to the time he lived at and is an undoubted reference to the discoveries of the day - including that of the atom, unless of course you disagree with Dr Jacob Bronowski's interpretation on Blake (one of the world's foremost experts on the poet). Both poetic excerpts refer to a connectivity - of the nature of nature. In The instance I gave of Blake's Agueries of Innocence, this relates to the scientific times in which Blake lived.

But you know what, in a sense non of the above matters, and much of this is debate of a side issue. Why? Because the one thing that both excepts have in common is that their words have all entered the popular lexicon and can, unlike jargon be easily understood.

The issue does not relate to science at all - that is my contention!

Quote
To take from Dominic`s poem:

tritium, lepton, anti-proton.
They collide
as if smashed inside

a particle accelerator.
But it's just Aramis sleeping,
twitching himself back

The terms: `tritium` `lepton` `anti-proton` and `particle accelerator` are words that are physical - scientist specific and mainly poetically ineffective to the general reader.
Unquote

No Harry! The words are ineffective to the reader because they are opaque, have not entered the general/popular lexicon and constitute jargon.

This is just as true for Theology as it is for philosophy as it is for...well anything!

You could construct a poem out of management or PR spiel, you could construct a poem out of health & safety jargon - no matter, it would all suffer the same fate.

Like I said originally the best scientific poems do not use jargon, neither do the best religious poems or the best love poems lol etc

Quote
You mentioned quantum Physics and I wondered if the language of this might – in time – become part of poetic usage. But when we are told of such things as the `two Slits` the `Light bulb` and that cat in the `Schrodinger equation` or the `Uncertainty Principle` ) we can`t hold out much hope.
Unquote

Certain words have already entered the popular lexicon and therefore work poetically. The word "quantum" for example. This word works as well as the word "cloud" does when considering digital storage...offering new double meaning in language.

The Uncertainty Principle has little poetic use, two slits less still. Then again what use any of this poetically?

Soft Complementarian
Summa Theologica
Five proofs of Aquinas
Relevant ecumenical perspective
Basic laity typology
ex cathedra

Here is a little Theological excerpt:

It is tempting to reduce the communicative act to its proposition content alone. Yet such an identification of divine discourse with propositional content is too hasty and reductionist, for it omits two other important aspects of the communicative action, namely, the illocutionary (what is done) and perlocutionary (what is effected). To repeat: what is authoritative about the Bible is what God says and does in and with its words. To equate God's word with the content it conveys is to work with an abbreviated Scripture principles that reduces revelation to the propositional residue of it's locutions [!]. Such an abbreviated Scripture principle, in overlooking the illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions, is both christologically and pneumatologically deficient. It fails to see that what Scripture is doing is witnessing to and hence mediating Christ, and it fails to do justice to the role of the Holy Spirit in making sure that this witness is effective.

Now how much of that and how many terms therein could we use poetically?

It is equally opaque as the scientific words you deride - it contains huge opaque concepts and for that reason is poetically, as, if not more limited.

Jargon - not science is the issue.


Quote
I am convinced that the language of poetry – whether we like it or not – will always remain quasi-religious and leave all sceptics perfectly free to be sceptical.
Unquote

You may remain as convinced, as you like. You might think that you can run the 100 meters faster than Usain Bolt, it doesn't make it so. To claim that poetry in effect IS whether we like it or not, semi-religious to me is not only utterly absurd, I would argue it's a dogma that is impossible to argue with.

You're telling an atheist that their poetry is semi-religious lol. And you must be, because your claim is all-encompassing. I mean Harry, less than 10% of my poetry relates in any way shape or form to religion. Semi-religious is simply the lens you look through. The problem is you're ascribing that viewpoint to everyone, when really it is a viewpoint of "some", valid though that is.

I love your wit, intelligence and conversation, not least your poetry (which is marvellous and a joy to hear)...but we're miles apart I fear.

P.S

Sorry if I seem harsh in any way...I don't mean to. I'm just speaking it out as I see it logically.

Chris,
WOW!!! (and I thought I was safe)

Thanks for your friendly comments.

(If this cold lets me, I`m off to the Azores on friday - I`m not runnin` away, honest!)

I`ll have a go at gettin` it back to
poetic poetry anon (before Ian shoots the two of us)

I know - sorry Harry. Forensic and dull, I hoped for more of myself lol. Poetry might be my forte, either way this is not :)

Alas we work with what we have...

Have a great holiday, a warm lovely great holiday! No accidents with zipps , flat tyres or Chinese meals :)

Chris, if you use 'eutectic' in a poem you are bordering on the fruity side, but I still love you XXX

The Poem Fails


The poem fails
It cannot render traction
Or the queer zero,
Rehearse location
Or mine gravity.

Panic & lapse
Immune to weak forces
Arise on threads of absence
In mechanical waves,
Muted by observation
& uncertain rules
In the chamber of bias.

An adumbration transpires.
Wanton longing. Dimension
Flattened & tamped.

I do like that poem, Johnnie.

Thanks Steven. That's very kind.a

Chris, I kept hoping that this had gone away :) ( what are you tryin` to do to me)

Ah well, here goes!

1…Having just been safely hefted to Tenerife and back in a huge hunk of streamlined metal I most humbly praise and admire the achievements of science.

2…I understand what you say about NOMA but admit the right of either science or religion to comment on anything, including each other and poetry.

3…your comment "the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry, or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience." (with stress upon the key words, `any philosophical or other inquiry` and `only science` ) Is what I mean by `scientism`. The `natural` being only what we can see, touch, hear, and smell – only the spatio–temporal world - including man. When a scientist explains the world in these terms he really is saying:` this is all that there is`

4…What I mean by `cutting edge science disappearing` is that the classic Physics upon which this view is based is being challenged by the bizarre discoveries about the nature of reality being probed by the quantum theory.

5…However these theories end up, I`m far more interested in scientific terms and poetic language. To return to our two examples.

Yours:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

It is the sheer power of the religious/philosophical words that allow the poet to effectively say what he feels at that moment.

Or mine:

All things by immortal power,
Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linkèd are
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star;`

Whether the poet knew it or not, the God-word `immortal` powerfully describes the wonder of what we call the `butterfly effect` in the Chaos theory of today.

Bronowski said: `Carbon is formed in a star whenever three helium nuclei collide at one spot within less than a millionth of a second. Every carbon atom in every living creature has been formed by such a wildly improbable collision.

For me this cries out for some religious expression. I wonder does any `scientifically ` worded
poem ever do justice to the wonders that science is revealing…I`d love to see them.

To se a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour

I hope to discuss these lines in our next Marsden Write Out Loud event, as they are some of my favourites of all time, and everyone has been invited to bring theirs to read and discuss, perhaps reading work inspired by them.

Blake’s lines evoke a frisson, an emotion in me that – not being a scientist – I cannot explain and, being a romantic, don’t really wish to. Were I religious my understanding of, and reaction to, the word ‘heaven’ might be different from my secular - though perhaps no less spiritual - one.

By analyzing them – scientifically? – we might arrive at some conclusion of their ‘literary’ meaning, but not their import, that being personal to the reader, I suggest; and perhaps to the context in which they are experienced.

Quoted aloud in the context of a bohemian Bordeaux brasserie once, in the presence of a beautiful young, poetry loving, woman, a shared poetic thrill at the words’ majesty made memories that might stand as metaphor for much of my love of poetry, and matters more temporal. It’s not rocket science.

Julian,
Circumstances are restricting me for awhile But I`m fascinated by
this science/poetry thread.

Here are a couple of examples - again from Thompson. (his poem `Contemplation`)

No hill can idler be than I;
No stone its inter-particled vibration
Investeth with a stiller lie;

In skies that no man sees to move,
Lurk untumultuous vortices of power

which seem to refer to the very modern particulate nuclear theory
and the presece of the forces of the air that give lift to the eagles and other birds....Yet both apparently before their `time` .

For me it`s not so much a case of matter `versus` spirit, rather than a poetic appreciation of what `matter` really is.

I wonder if anyone can find more examples?

I wrote a poem Lepidopterist and it is the nearest I have ever been to science