Science and art

Patrick Kurp posted some thoughts on science writing and literature. He quotes Chappell: "Poetry celebrates visual appearance while disciplines like chemistry and particle physics plunge below appearance into a universe often impossible to visualize, a void punctuated by brief pulses and intermittent bleeps of electromagnetic energy. There is, besides, the dread problem of accuracy:"

One could quote Dirac on learning that Oppenheimer wrote poetry:

I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition. In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say ... something that everyone knows already in words that nobody can understand.

That's probably not being entirely fair to Oppenheimer, though it may depend on which poems Dirac was thinking of. (I don't think my wife would be thrilled to receive such an Epithalamion.)

But in the general case Dirac was wrong, the poetic ideal is to be understood.

"True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind."

True, in the sciences and in math precision is vital—a statement should mean one thing only, while in poetry a phrase can stand for or allude to many things—preferably compactly, memorably, beautifully, and rhythmically. "In size, a node; in swing, more anti."

Dirac was convinced of the importance of beauty in physics, that the clumsy expression of the details of reality could be underpinned by simple and beautiful equations.

The language will be unfamiliar to many, but surely this is also a kind of poetry too.

(And it's better poetry than when we try our hands at more traditional versions.)

Poetry?

Patrick Kurp passed along the detail that William Topaz McGonagall was "the worst poet in the world." I tried reading his The Tay Bridge Disaster and my eyes hurt too much to finish. I think he bests The Sweet Singer of Michigan (perhaps best known now for a little tweaking she got from Twain in Huck Finn(*)) for the title of worst.

(*) I had no idea she inspired Ogden Nash.

Boring

After the past post I wasted some time with songs from Goldilocks (*), including I never know when. It's not great poetry, but "My dreams all bore me now" is a good line. Been there, done that.

It's a useful time--so long as you work to find out what the dreams were missing, and don't slide into aimlessness.

And no, most retirement dreams haven't bored me.

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(*) Leroy Anderson wrote the music. Light--songs like "No One'll Ever Love You (like you do)"

Lyrics question

When I first heard Grazing in the Grass (on a crackly AM station) I couldn't make out what this refrain was. When I finally figured out the lyrics, I wondered how in the world they managed to sing what I found to be such a tongue-twister.

From the ridiculous to the sublime: from my observation this morning some hymns have lines that are a bit harder to sing--the syllable sounds don't make for easy transitions from one sound to another. If you have a syllable ending in "d", you need a little extra air between that and the next one that starts with a "t". I suppose syllables that blend together smoothly can be called "slurs" or something similar, but I'm not familiar enough with musical terminology to say.

Is there a term for the juxtapositions that make it harder to sing smoothly? Jackhammer words, maybe?

I suppose if the music is stacatto, these might fit better than those that allow "slurs", but most of the time, or for spoken poetry, I'd think them worse.

At any rate, I wonder what terms I should use in searching to learn more.

Choruses from The Rock

by T.S. Eliot: Chorus V

O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian: were doubtless men of public spirit and zeal.

Preserve me from the enemy who has something to gain: and from the friend who has something to lose.

Remembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: " The trowel in hand, and the gun rather loose in the holster."

Those who sit in a house of which the use is forgotten: are like snakes that lie on mouldering stairs, content in the sun light.

And the others run about like dogs, full of enterprise, sniffing and barking: they say, " This house is a nest of serpents, let us destroy it,

And have done with these abominations, the turpitudes of the Christians." And these are not justified, nor the others.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.

If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the home: and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City.

The man who has builded during the day would return to his hearth at nightfall: to be blessed with the gift of silence, and doze before he sleeps.

But we are encompassed with snakes and dogs: therefore some must labour, and others must hold the spears.

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There are some memorable lines in that work: 'And the wind shall say: " Here were decent godless people: Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls".' or

I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know That it is hard to be really useful, resigning The things that men count for happiness, seeking The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting With equal face those that bring ignominy, The applause of all or the love of none.

Poetry with a purpose

In the comments to AVI's post on poetry at ChicagoBoyz, I read a reference to "rollicking stanzas about judgement day by Wigglesworth."

I had to look it up. It is exceedingly Calvinist: single-predestinarian. The book isn't only the one poem; there are several others as well. When you read them, remember that the '-ed' ending is sometimes a separate syllable and you'll find it scans much better.

The last poem in the collection is headed thus:

VANITY OF VANITIES.
A SONG of EMPTINESS, to fill up the Empty Pages following.

Poetry and music

I hesitate to call something so short a dream, but I had a dream that I was sitting next to a country music composer of patriotic songs and handing him Kipling's Et Dona ferentes and suggesting that he might find it inspiring. I suppose I had been slightly irritated sometime the previous day...

On waking, I thought the notion rather fitting. Perhaps not that work in particular (a nice idea, but a trifle clunky), but honor and common sense and place matter in his work--and I can't imagine pop singers touching Danny Deever with a barge pole, though a few country singers might. On the other hand, Pete Seeger or Joan Baez might have done something with Birds of Prey March. Kipling often uses a much longer line than most songs do, so quotation probably won't fly.

If you could find an American idiom for the phrase Gods of the Copybook Headings, that one might almost write itself--but not by Taylor Swift.

UPDATE: Spell-check turned "ferentes" into "ferments"