While digging through some poetry anthologies that I own, I discovered a poem about fossils and geology. As such, I decided to post this poem do to its unusual content (I've never read a poem about fossils before):

Fossils

by Arthur J. Stewart

I come down across stones lightly,

a part of them. Sandstone, shale

something else that's old-bone white -

perhaps the granite knows.

(The translation of time from stone

to stone

takes time. Things

move slowly.)

Trilobites mix quietly with small fishes.

Coal knows more by far than I.

Anthracite blinks in the sun,

smiling sleepily, thinking deeply of seed-ferns.

There as a time when things

fought to the death to decide

whether a clutch of eggs

would bear scales or feathers

But now, Archaeopteryx is just

a clumsy arrow bent in sandstone,

with a three or four-chambered heart

that still sighs with your ear held close.

--Ben

I found the poem, "Lullabye for the Second Millennium" by J. Allyn Rosser, interesting. It provided an interesting "evolution" and "history" of the planet.

Lullabye for the Second Millennium

by J. Allyn Rosser

From the point of view of all time,

these recent changes signal

more a return to a nature

than a departure, than degradation.

In the beginning, after all,

there was boiling rock.

Then waters arranging their bodies

around an era of softer forms:

lichen, grassland, swaying treetops.

Then creatures, movingly fleshed,

treading pathways that hardened.

Then pavement hardening

and cities, monumental.

Soon mostly rock again,

and radiant. More and more like moon.

Soon, sooner than is being thought,

there will be even more light.

The creatures will have stopped

being able to move

or be moved.

And the rock will boil.

--Ben

Here is a very clever poem sharing some frustrating aspects of technology.

Three Six Five Zero

by Conor O'Callaghan

I called up tech and got the voicemail code.

It's taken me this long to find my feet.

Since last we spoke that evening it has snowed.

Fifty-four new messages. Most are old

and blinking into a future months complete.

I contacted tech to get my voicemail code

to hear you voice, not some bozo on the road

the week of Thanksgiving dubbing me his sweet

and breaking up and bleating how it snowed

the Nashville side of Chattanooga and slowed

the beltway to a standstill. The radio said sleet.

The kid in tech set on my voicemail code.

I blew a night on the lightening the system's load,

woke to white enveloping the trees, the street

that's blanked out by my leaving. It had snowed.

Lately others' pasts will turn me cold.

I heard out every message, pressed delete.

I'd happily forget my voice, the mail, its code.

We spoke at last that evening. Then it snowed.

--Ben

Here are a couple of new poems that I found. I think the first provides an interesting insight how logic can be applied to the question of "why are we here." It also presents a sad fact: the universe can be at times apathetic. The second is an ode to madame Curie.

A Man Said to the Universe

by Stephen Crane

A man said to the universe:

"Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the universe,

"The fact has not created in me

"A sense of obligation."

To Madame Curie

by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Oft have I thrilled at deeds of high emprise,

And yearned to venture into realms unknown,

Thrice blessed she, I deemed, whom God had shown

How to achieve great deeds in woman's guise.

Yet what discov'ry by expectant eyes

Of foreign shores, could vision half the throne

Full gained by her, whose power fully grown

Exceeds the conquerors of th' uncharted skies?

So would I be this woman whom the world

Avows its benefactor; nobler far,

Than Sybil, Joan, Sappho, or Egypt's queen.

In the alembic forged her shafts and hurled

At pain, diseases, waging a humane war;

Greater than this achievement, none, I ween.

--Ben

The Atom

The Atom
By Thomas Thornely

"We do not in the least know how to harness the energy locked up in the atoms of matter. If it could be liberated at will, we would experience a violence beside which the suddenness of high explosive is gentle and leisurely." Sir O.Lodge

Wake not the imprisoned power that sleeps
Unknown, or dimly guessed, in thee!
Thine awful secret Nature keeps,
And pales, when stealthy science creeps
Towards that beleaguered mystery.

Well may she start and desperate strain,
To thrust the bold besiegers back;
If they that citadel should gain,
What grisly shapes of death and pain
May rise and follow in their track!

The power that warring atoms yield,
Man has to guiltiest purpose turned.
Too soon the wonder was revealed,
Earth flames in one red battle-field;
Could but that lesson be unlearned!

Thy last dread secret, Nature! keep;
Add not to man's tumultuous woes;
Till war and hate are laid to sleep,
Keep those grim forces buried deep,
That in thine atoms still repose.


~Badger

Benzene

Benzene
By Paul Board

Authors note...With sincere apologies to William Blake! -

Benzene! Benzene! Burning bright
Belching engines day and night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame Kekulé's symmetry?

Who'd have thought your Carbon Six
Could have produced such toxic tricks
Or provide the building blocks
For a plastic world (and cure the pox)?

Aesthetic, perfect aromatic
Substitutes produce chromatic
Dyes that brighten every day.
Thank you Mr Faraday.

Clothe our backs and cure our ills
Blow or dull our brains with pills
Ironic that your homologues
Pollute our land and stock our smogs

Benzene - your hydroxyl daughters
Need locking up, they pollute our waters
Adding chlorine provides persistence
(Target organs keep your distance).

Doubt Kekulé ever dreamt
Of such riches (or torment).
Oh benzene whether bound or free
Did He who made the Lamb make Thee ?

Benzene! Benzene! Burning bright
Belching engines day and night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame Kekulé's symmetry ?


~Badger

Here are two more poems that I find quite interesting; you may have seen them posted over the campus. If not, enjoy!

Sublimation Point
Jason Schneiderman
for M.B.

The answer is entropy-how smell works-
little bits of everything-always spinning
off from where they were-flying at random
into the world-which is to say into air

There are other ways of solid to gas-
they're substance specific, like iodine,
or dry ice-how I felt when I saw you-
straight to a a new state without passing
through expected ones-as though enough
of me left at the moment you appeared that
I could never be whole with you-apply
heat-I turn straight into ether.


Molecular Evolution
James Clerk Maxwell

At quite uncertain times and places,

The atoms left their heavenly path,

And by fortuitous embraces,

Engendered all that being hath.

And though they seem to cling together,

And form “associations” here,

Yet, soon or late, they burst their tether,

And through the depths of space career.

So we who sat, oppressed with science,

As British asses, wise and grave,

Are now transformed to wild Red Lions,

As round our prey we ramp and rave.

Thus, by a swift metamorphosis,

Wisdom turns wit, and science joke,

Nonsense is incense to our noses,

For when Red Lions speak, they smoke.

Hail, Nonsense! dry nurse of Red Lions,

From thee the wise their wisdom learn,

From thee they cull those truths of science,
Which into thee again they turn.

What combinations of ideas,

Nonsense alone can wisely form!

What sage has half the power that she has,

To take the towers of Truth by storm?

Yield, then, ye rules of rigid reason!

Dissolve, thou too, too solid sense!
Melt into nonsense for a season,

Then in some nobler form condense.

Soon, all too soon, the chilly morning,

This flow of soul will crystallize,

Then those who Nonsense now are scorning,

May learn, too late, where wisdom lies.

-*-Wizard-*-

At a Lunar Eclipse

At a Lunar Eclipse
By Thomas Hardy

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?


~Badger

When I Heard the Learned Astronomer

When I Heard the Learned Astronomer
by Walt Whitman

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.



~Badger

Welcome!

Welcome to the Scientific Stanzas Poetry Project blog! It is our hope that this project will expand your horizons and give the scientific community at the University of Illinois an opportunity to experience poetry. We will be posting science related poems to help scientists relate to poetry. Enjoy and check back often for poetic updates!

As an introduction to science related poetry I present Edgar Allen Poe's "Sonnet-To Science" (1829):

Sonnet-To Science

Edgar Allen Poe

Science! true daughters of Old Time thou art!

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dulled realities?

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?

Hast thou dragged Diana from her car,

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,

The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

-*-Wizard-*-