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Bright Star

Posted in Biographical, Poetry with tags , , on December 7, 2009 by telescoper

After spending the best part of the day ploughing through a succession of tedious jobs and wasting most of my lunch break trying to cope with a recalcitrant IPod, I came home with a brain completely drained of any bloggable material. However, picking up the paper instead of switching the television on proved to be a good move. It reminded me that I went to see the film Bright Star a couple of weeks ago. Since yesterday’s post was in poetic vein a quick post about it would seem to be in order, although I’ve never attempted a movie review on here before.

Directed by Jane Campion, Bright Star is a film about the life of John Keats (played by Ben Whishaw) and his passionate infatuation with the girl next door, a young lady by the name of Fanny Brawne (Abby Cornish). This romance inspired Keats to compose some of the most famous  love letters ever written in the English language. Keats’  letters were published in the 1870s (long after his death in 1821 at the aged of 25) but the other half of the correspondence – the letters written by Fanny – are lost. This is a problem for literary historians, who don’t really know what to make of her, but a boon for the dramatist, who has the chance to create a character from scratch unfettered by too many preconceptions. What emerges is a dignified, slightly eccentric and highly fashion-conscious heroine who makes stylish hats and frocks while her admirer is scribbling his verses. There’s more sewing in this film than in any other I’ve ever seen. The clothes look great, if a bit anachronistic. It’s a costume drama with a difference. Overall, in fact, the film looks gorgeous. The photography is just stunning – it has been a very long time since I last saw anything so beautiful on the big screen.

Keats once described Fanny as “beautiful, elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable and strange”. I think Abby Cornish conveys all of that. But at other times he was less flattering, calling her

ignorant – monstrous in her behaviour, flying out in all directions, calling people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the term Minx – this I think not from any innate vice but from a penchant she has for acting stylishly.  I am however tired of such style and shall decline any more of it.

Of course he did no such thing. Keats’ friend Charles Amitage Brown thought Fanny was an interfering flirt and American critic  Richard Henry Stoddard said “She made him look ridiculous in the eyes of his friends”.  There’s no way of knowing what she was really like – it’s always hard for outsiders to understand other people’s obsessions anyway – but in the movie she is definitely a bit prickly at times.

By contrast with Fanny’s perky glamour, Keats himself is a drab, introspective, almost ghostly figure. His brother dies of tuberculosis – the disease which will shortly get him too. His descent into poverty and illness is exacerbated by the terrible critical reception that greets his poetry. The only thing he really has to cling to is his relationship with “The Minx” which is beautifully portrayed, their growing intimacy only gradually revealed. Much of their dialogue is taken, word for word, directly from Keats’ letters but somehow it doesn’t sound stilted. Their passion is restrained, but keenly observed.

The title of the movie is actually taken from that of one of Keats’ poems. Written in 1819, a year after he met Fanny, this expresses a desire to withdraw from the shifting uncertain world of change and enter a world of timelessness where he can be with his beloved for all eternity.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

Keats himself died just a couple of years after writing this, although I doubt that his death from tuberculosis amounted to the kind of blissful rapture he suggests in the last two lines.

Walking back home afterwards, it struck me that  if you didn’t know anything about Keats and Fanny Brawne before watching the film, you would think it was Fanny who was the “Bright Star” of the title. During his lifetime there was never any suggestion that John Keats would ever – even in death – acquire a reputation as one of the greatest poets in the English language.  His work was never popular in his lifetime and was pretty universally reviled by critics too. In poetry as well as in science, it is well nigh impossible to know what is going to last. Only time will tell.

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Science and Poetry

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on December 6, 2009 by telescoper

In amongst all the doom and gloom about job cuts and the oncoming onslaught that goes by the name of impact, I found in this week’s Times Higher a thought-provoking article about the demise of poetry. The author, Neil McBride, is principal lecturer in Informatics at De Montfort University and the piece is made all the more interesting by the fact that it includes some of his own verse. In fact, with his permission, I’ve included one of the poems below.

I agree with some of what McBride says in his article and disagree with some too. I don’t intend to dissect the piece here, and suggest instead that you read it yourself and form your own opinion. Since I wanted to include one of the poems here, however, I thought I should at least address its context in the article. The opening paragraph states

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the renowned astrophysicist, hid her love for poetry from the world until she retired, out of fear for what people would think.

In fact, I posted an item about an anthology of astronomy-inspired poems edited by Jocelyn on this blog many moons ago. McBride goes on to describe an anthology of poetry written by scientists that was published in 2001 wherein all the writers remained anonymous, the reason being

Good intelligent men and women, clothed in cold rationality, considered it professional suicide to admit to any literary emotions.

The following poem, McBride’s own, develops this image to the point of caricature:

Science and Poetry

In his lab he’s hid “Whitsun Weddings” behind the sink,
The latest volume of Fuller sandwiched between reagent catalogues.
Shakespeare’s sonnets encoded in the lab book
Rossetti pasted to the wall behind the periodic table.

Amongst the chaotic dishes and tubes, there cannot be anything poetic at all
Rhythm and language must be neutralised, the third person
Is the wash of objectivity, the veneer of scientific discipline:
Verse is hidden at the back of a draw covered with Millipore.

The poets of science have no names, clothed in the shame
Of irrationality, the atrocity of the literary mind is unspoken
Words must be disguised, sanitised. Any evidence of life
Outside the rational, the objective, must be denied.

The observatory is cold, dark, starless. Pulsars blip
The steady drip, drip of numbers stripped of spirit
The poetry of the stars must be denied
Planets are mathematical objects swimming in an emotional vacuum.

Do not suggest that patterns, laws, and the aesthetics of structure
Hold anything of the spirit. Don’t speak poetry to me:
We silence our critics, mute emotions, declare ourselves ‘observers’.
There is no soul, nothing but a rotting body of clockwork chemicals.

It’s certainly a finely crafted piece of satire, but as a scientist myself I have to stand up for my brothers and sisters and say that it is very far from my experience of their view of literature. Perhaps astronomy attracts more romantic types more likely to wear their hearts (and literary sensibilities) on their sleeves than computer scientists or chemists. The many scientists I know who do read and write poetry do not hide- and, as far as I know, never have hid – this from their peers or anyone else. And I doubt if it ever occurred to any of them that confession to a love of poetry would damage their careers. I don’t think there ever was a reason for Dame Jocelyn to have hidden it away for all those years, or perhaps she was just using poetic license?

McBride goes on to discuss a number of possible reasons for poetry’s falling popularity. Modern poetry is too difficult , too obscure, too “academic” , for the reader-in-the-street to understand. That’s not helped by the fact that, in this digital age people, the immediate availability of easier visual forms of entertainment is making people less receptive to literature that requires prolonged reflection. I think there’s truth in both of these arguments, but I think there’s another possibility: that the internet revolution may just be changing the way literature is conceived and delivered, just as technological and sociological change has done many times in the past.

In the course of his very interesting piece, McBride also touches on another theme I’ve posted about a number of times. To quote:

Perhaps the power of poetry is its downfall. It addresses uncertainty. It questions, it leaves frayed edges and loose wires. We reject poetry because we shun its emotional engagement.

This reminds me of the stereotypical image of a scientist as an arrogant god of certainty, one that I don’t recognize at all. Scientists are constantly addressing uncertainty. That’s their job. I’m sure we’re all too aware of frayed edges and loose wires too. The conflict and indeterminacy we face in our work is not the same as people find in their emotional lives, of course, but the need to engage with it causes similar levels of stress!

Most people don’t care much for either science or poetry. Both are considered too hard, but probably in different ways. The digital age hasn’t turned everyone into unthinking zombies, but I think it has probably led to more people opting out of difficult ways of earning a living and finding easier ways of spending their leisure time. But there are still some who find pleasure in what’s difficult. Perhaps the reason why so many scientists love poetry is that they know how hard it is.

You can find more of Neil McBride’s poetical work here.

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Black Hole

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on November 24, 2009 by telescoper

After an exceptionally trying day, I’ve been relaxing by dipping into a collection of poems called Dangerous Driving by Chris Woods. He’s an interesting character who works part-time as a GP in Lancashire and tries to balance medicine, family and writing. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers and has also been broadcast on BBC Radio and Channel Four Television (including a series called Six Experiments that Changed the World, to which I was also a contributor).

Anyway I’ve developed  a bit of a habit of putting up poems with vaguely astronomical themes so when I found this one, I decided to put it up here not least because it made me think of the person who has been causing me so much hassle over the past few days….

Black Hole

You turn all the lights off
but never sleep,
pace round the edge of yourself,
never communicate.
A million dark years distant,
you suck in light like spaghetti.

You got too big for yourself
and collapsed,
but ferocious energy remained
and now you’re back, muscling in
carving out your own space
and time.

You smash up your neighbourhood,
pull the light off stars.
Masked,
you are far outside our laws,
giving nothing away,
stealing everything from everything.

(reproduced with the kind permission of Comma Press).

You can also see a video based on the poem Black Hole from Ghost Code on Vimeo although I have to admit I could make neither head nor tail of it.

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Planet Wave

Posted in Jazz, Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on November 17, 2009 by telescoper

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) will know that from time to time I like to post little bits of poetry. The verses are usually related to astronomy (or science generally)  and they’re usually things I come across pretty much by accident when I’m browsing through the books of poetry I occasionally buy. This evening I was leafing through a collection called A Book of Lives, by the popular and highly respected Scottish national poet Edwin Morgan.  In the middle of this set is a long sequence of poems called Planet Wave, each of which is to do with a specific historical episode or important character, such as Copernicus or Darwin. The first poem in the cycle is about the Big Bang so I thought it would be a good choice.

However, regular readers will also know that I like to post bits of jazz on here too – although the blog statistics suggest that these are much less popular than the poetry!  I read in the Book of Lives that the first half the sequence of poems making up Planet Wave was commissioned by the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival and set to music by the excellent Tommy Smith. The poetry and music combination was first performed in Cheltenham Town Hall on 4 April 1997.

Great, I thought. Here’s a chance to combine jazz and poetry (for what would only be the second time on here, the first being this post). Unfortunately, though, I’ve been unable to locate any recording of a performance of this work. I found an interview with Tommy Smith on the net which suggests a recording was made but never released. I’d certainly love to hear it and I hope that there might be a jazz fan out there somewhere who knows what happened to it.

Anyway, in the absence of the music here’s just the first verse of the first poem of the cycle.  As you will see, Morgan’s style is very inventive, often extremely funny, and always extremely Scottish.

In the Beginning
(20 Billion BC)

Don’t ask me and don’t tell me. I was there.
It was a bang and it was big. I don’t know
what went before, I came out with it.
Think about that if you want my credentials.
Think about that, me, it, imagine it
as I recall it now, swinging in my spacetime hammock,
nibbling a moon or two, watching you.
What am I? You don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
I am the witness, I am not in the dock.
I love matter and I love anti-matter.
Listen to me, listen to my patter.

(Reproduced by kind permission of Carcanet Press.)

If you want to read the rest you’ll have to buy the book! And if anyone out there knows what happened to the recording of Planet Wave please let me know. I’d love to hear it!

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Dulce et Decorum Est

Posted in Poetry with tags , on November 9, 2009 by telescoper

Folowing on from yesterday’s post, here’s probably the greatest poem by the greatest of all the poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen. He captures the horror and brutality of war in language so potent that it still retains the ability to shock even now, 90 years later. Every image attacks the myth of war as a noble or glamorous thing and the cumulative effect of this onslaught is overwhelming. The title comes from a phrase in Horace, also quoted in the last lines of the verse: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (It is sweet and suitable to die for your country).

There is a nice short video clip featuring Jeremy Paxman that really says it all, but it’s just as powerful if you read the text yourself.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

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Valley Comprehensive

Posted in Poetry with tags , , on November 6, 2009 by telescoper

The other day I wandered into a bookshop in Cardiff and happened upon a collection of poems by Patrick Jones called darkness is where the stars are (published by the wonderful Cinnamon Press). In case you weren’t aware, Patrick Jones a Welsh poet who is the brother of Nicky Wire, the bass player of the Manic Street Preachers and he has collaborated with the band extensively over the years.  You can find his official website here.

This particular collection of poems was at the centre of a controversy around this time last year because a campaigning group called Christian Voice decided it was blasphemous and protested in large numbers outside Waterstone’s Bookshop where the book was to be launched at an event at which poet was planning to read some of his work. The launch was cancelled at  the advice of the local Police, for  “safety reasons”. Jones later read some of his poems at the Welsh Assembly.

Whatever its motivations this protest clearly backfired because the book gained  more publicity than a publisher of modern poetry could ever dream of. It certainly made me curious about it last year, although I soon forget about it. However, seeing it again more recently, I finally decided to buy it.

As an atheist, I’m not competent to pronounce on whether or not it is blasphemous, although some of the poems do deal uncompromisingly with themes about which many are extremely sensitive, especially religion and sexuality.

I thought I’d put one of the poems on here by way of an advertisement for the collection as a whole which Peter Tatchell describes on the cover as “thoughtful, provocative and challenging”.  I picked a poem called Valley Comprehensive. Although written from the point of view of an English teacher bemoaning the regimentation of modern school education, it struck a chord with me in the light of yesterday’s post. Science education nowadays also has too much of an emphasis on the memorising of facts and too little on the drawing about the creative abilities of the human brain. I always thought the main problem is that the word “learn” can be taken to mean “memorise” as well as “discover”. Too much education concentrates on the former rather than the latter.

I don’t think it really matters so much whether you use words or equations to express ideas. Poets and physicists are not as different as you might think, except writing poetry is harder.

when questions become answers
when stars are merely facts
as the white board becomes all knowing lord
and red pens stamp our destiny on our stooping backs

the beauty of learning dies
when minds cannot search and find
just swallow factations whole
when exam results and league tables
fire the engines of education
it’s the premiership in the classroom
no room for the least able
the noose tightens on free thought
as sets slyly amputate aspiration

only those who will pass the tests
will be allowed to take the tests

as
the unchosen
stammer in silence
tread water in clock watched anticipation
until their failure is legitimised
and school becomes brain asphyxiation

no wonder in the universe
no questions for their gods
i’d rather a tree taught me how to grow
than
tell a class how not to write

only those who will pass the tests
will be allowed to take the tests

shouldn’t education be
about teaching children

how,

not

what

to think?

(reproduced with the kind permission of Cinnamon Press).

9 Comments »

Exploitation

Posted in Poetry, Science Politics with tags , , on October 27, 2009 by telescoper

At the last Meeting of the RAS Council on October 9th 2009, Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), made a presentation after which he claimed that STFC spends too much on “exploitation”, i.e. on doing science with the facilities it provides. This statement clearly signals an intention to cut grants to research groups still further and funnel a greater proportion of STFC’s budget into technology development rather than pure research.

Following on from Phillip Helbig’s challenge a couple of posts ago, I decided to commemorate the occasion with an appropriate sonnet, inspired by Shakespeare’s Sonnet 14.

TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.THIS.INSU(LT)ING.SONNET.

Mr K.O.M.

It seems Keith Mason doesn’t give a fuck
About the future of Astronomy.
“The mess we’re in is down to rotten luck
And our country’s  ruin’d economy”;
Or that’s the tale our clueless leader tells
When oft by angry critics he’s assailed,
Undaunted he in Swindon’s office dwells
Refusing to accept it’s him that failed.
And now he tells us we must realise:
We spend “too much on science exploitation”.
Forget the dreams of research in blue skies
The new name of the game is wealth creation.
A truth his recent statement underlines
Is that we’re doomed unless this man resigns.

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Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , on October 23, 2009 by telescoper

According to my blog access statistics, some of the poems I post on here seem to be fairly popular so I thought I’d put up another one by another poet  from the Metaphysical tradition, William Habington. He belonged to a prominent Catholic family and lived in England from 1605 to 1654, during a time of great religious upheaval.

The title of this particular poem is taken from the Latin (Vulgate) version of Psalm 19, the first two lines of which are

Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei et opus manus eius adnuntiat firmamentum.
Dies diei eructat verbum et nox nocti indicat scientiam.

The King James Bible translates this as

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

Some translations I have seen give “night after night” rather than the form above. My distant recollection of  Latin learnt at school tells me that nocti is the dative case of the third declension noun nox, so I think think “night shows knowledge to night” is indeed the correct sense of the Latin. Of course I don’t know what the sense of the original Hebrew is!

The original Psalm is the text on which one of the mightiest choruses of Haydn’s  Creation is based, “The Heavens are Telling” and Habington’s poem is a meditation on it. It seems to me to be a natural companion to the poem by John Masefield I posted earlier in the week, but I don’t know whether they share a common inspiration in the Psalm or just in the Universe itself.

When I survey the bright
Celestial sphere;
So rich with jewels hung, that Night
Doth like an Ethiop bride appear:

My soul her wings doth spread
And heavenward flies,
Th’ Almighty’s mysteries to read
In the large volumes of the skies.

For the bright firmament
Shoots forth no flame
So silent, but is eloquent
In speaking the Creator’s name.

No unregarded star
Contracts its light
Into so small a character,
Removed far from our human sight,

But if we steadfast look
We shall discern
In it, as in some holy book,
How man may heavenly knowledge learn.

It tells the conqueror
That far-stretch’d power,
Which his proud dangers traffic for,
Is but the triumph of an hour:

That from the farthest North,
Some nation may,
Yet undiscover’d, issue forth,
And o’er his new-got conquest sway:

Some nation yet shut in
With hills of ice
May be let out to scourge his sin,
Till they shall equal him in vice.

And then they likewise shall
Their ruin have;
For as yourselves your empires fall,
And every kingdom hath a grave.

Thus those celestial fires,
Though seeming mute,
The fallacy of our desires
And all the pride of life confute:–

For they have watch’d since first
The World had birth:
And found sin in itself accurst,
And nothing permanent on Earth.


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I could not sleep for thinking of the sky

Posted in Poetry with tags , on October 21, 2009 by telescoper

A comment from another blogger about an item of mine containing another bit of poetry led me to put up this astronomy-inspired poem, by the former Poet Laureate John Masefield. It’s from a cycle called Lollingdown Downs, and is actually the 12th poem in the sequence. I hope you like it.

I could not sleep for thinking of the sky,
The unending sky, with all its million suns
Which turn their planets everlastingly
In nothing, where the fire-haired comet runs.

If I could sail that nothing, I should cross
Silence and emptiness with dark stars passing,
Then, in the darkness, see a point of gloss
Burn to a glow, and glare, and keep amassing,

And rage into a sun with wandering planets
And drop behind, and then, as I proceed,
See his last light upon his last moon’s granites
Die to a dark that would be night indeed.

Night where my soul might sail a million years
In nothing, not even death, not even tears.

 

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Greatness in Little

Posted in Poetry, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on October 15, 2009 by telescoper

The BBC Website yesterday mentioned that according to the British Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees, celestial bodies are less complicated than the bodies of insects – let alone those of human beings – and cosmology is an easier science than the study of a balanced diet.

As I was tucking into my carefully balanced meal of fish and chips last night, the first part of the quotation suddenly reminded me of the following poem Greatness in Little by Richard Leigh (1649-1728), a relatively obscure poet of the seventeenth century who managed to excel himself in this particular poem of 1675 in which he compares the intricate workings of insects with the grandest achievements of human explorers.

In spotted globes, that have resembled all
Which we or beasts possess to one great ball
Dim little specks for thronging cities stand,
Lines wind for rivers, blots bound sea and land.
Small are those spots which in the moon we view,
Yet glasses these like shades of mountains shew;
As what an even brightness does retain,
A glorious level seems, and shining plain.
Those crowds of stars in the populous sky,
Which art beholds as twinkling worlds on high,
Appear to naked, unassisted sight
No more than sparks or slender points of light.
The sun, a flaming universe alone,
Bigger than that about which his fires run;
Enlightening ours, his globe but part does gild,
Part by his lustre or Earth’s shades concealed;
His glory dwindled so, as what we spy
Scarce fills the narrow circle of the eye.
What new Americas of light have been
Yet undiscovered there, or yet unseen,
Art’s near approaches awfully forbid,
As in the majesty of nature hid.
Nature, who with like state, and equal pride,
Her great works does in height and distance hide,
And shuts up her minuter bodies all
In curious frames, imperceptibly small.
Thus still incognito, she seeks recess
In greatness half-seen, or dim littleness.
Ah, happy littleness! that art thus blest,
That greatest glories aspire to seem least.
Even those installed in a higher sphere,
The higher they are raised, the less appear,
And in their exaltation emulate
Thy humble grandeur and thy modest state.
Nor is this all thy praise, though not the least,
That greatness is thy counterfeit at best.
Those swelling honours, which in that we prize,
Thou dost contain in thy more thrifty size;
And hast that pomp, magnificence does boast,
Though in thy stature and dimensions lost.
Those rugged little bodies whose parts rise
And fall in various inequalities,
Hills in the risings of their surface show,
As valleys in their hollow pits below.
Pompous these lesser things, but yet less rude
Than uncompact and looser magnitude.
What Skill is in the frame of Insects shown?
How fine the Threds, in their small Textures spun?
How close those Instruments and Engines knit,
Which Motion, and their slender Sense transmit?
Like living Watches, each of these conceals
A thousand Springs of Life, and moving wheels.
Each ligature a Lab’rynth seems, each part
All wonder is, all Workmanship and Art.
Rather let me this little Greatness know,
Then all the Mighty Acts of Great Ones do.
These Engines understand, rather than prove
An Archimedes, and the Earth remove.
These Atom-Worlds found out, I would despise
Colombus, and his vast Discoveries.

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