Untitled Ninth Poem in My ‘From the Video Box’ Sequence

Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science This page intentionally left blank Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science edited by ROBERT CRAWFORD 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © the several contributors Introduction and selection © Robert Crawford The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN ––– –––– to Ian Wall with thanks for his encouragement and patience and in memory of Michael Donaghy and Miroslav Holub distinctive, carrying voices This page intentionally left blank acknowledgements Firstly, thanks are due to Ian Wall of the Edinburgh International Science Festival, who knew I had written a number of poems about science, and talked me into running a programme of events from which this book grew. At a later stage the Sciarts scheme run by the Wellcome Trust with support from the Arts Council of England made it possible to bring together poets and scientists for the meet- ings which resulted in the poems in this book. Birgit Arends was very helpful in supporting this project, and a particular debt is owed to Dr Louisa Gairn who acted as project assistant at the University of St Andrews, and helped to run a series of events there. The Natural History Museum in London, Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre, the Scottish Poetry Library, the Poetry Society in London, the Scottish Science Centres, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and other institutions also lent support as matters developed. In St Andrews both StAnza and The Poetry House at the University of St Andrews provided continuing support. Special thanks are due to Dr Lilias Fraser, Jill Gamble, Brian Johnstone, Jane Sommerville, and all my colleagues in the School of English, University of St Andrews, as well as to Professor Wilson Sibbett of the School of Physics at St Andrews, who acted as the project’s overall scientific adviser. Nick Wetton helped clear copyright permissions with his customary geniality and efficiency. Great gratitude is due to my family and to all the book’s contributors who waited patiently for the better part of a decade as this book matured. Thanks also to all at Oxford University Press. The following sources and permissions for the use of copyright material should be acknowledged: Diane Ackerman: ‘We are Listen- ing’, from Jaguar of Sweet Laughter (Random House, ), © by Diane Ackerman, reprinted by permission of Random House Inc; Simon Armitage: ‘Newton’s Third Law’, from Zoom! (Bloodaxe Books, ), reprinted by permission of the publisher; ‘The Shout’, from The Universal Home Doctor (Faber and Faber, ); John Berryman: (‘The marker slants, flowerless, day’s almost done’), from The Dream Songs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ); John Burnside: ‘By Kautokeino’, from The Good Neighbour (Jonathan viii acknowledgements Cape, ), reprinted by permission of The Random House Group; Robert Crawford: from ‘Photonics’, and ‘Scotland’, from A Scottish Assembly (Chatto and Windus, ); ‘The Handshakes’, from Masculinity (Jonathan Cape, ); ‘Deincarnation’ and ‘Alford’, from Spirit Machines (Jonathan Cape, ), all reprinted by permission of The Random House Group; Rebecca Elson: ‘Let there always be light (searching for dark matter)’, from A Responsibility to Awe (Oxford Poets, ), reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press; Veronica Forrest-Thomson: ‘Cordelia: or, “A Poem Should not Mean, but Be” ’ and ‘The Dying Gladiator’, from Collected Poems and Translations, edited by A. Barnett (Allardyce, Barnett, Publishers, ), © Jonathan Culler and The Estate of Veronica Forrest- Thomson, , reprinted by permission of the publisher; Jorie Graham: from ‘Event Horizon’, in Materialism (The Ecco Press, ); Miroslav Holub: ‘In the Microscope’ and ‘The Corporal who killed Archimedes’, from Poems Before and After: Collected English Translations, translated by Ian and Jarmila Milner, Ewald Osers, and George Theiner (Bloodaxe Books, ), reprinted by permission of the publisher; Miroslav Holub: ‘Spacetime’ and ‘Kuru, or the Smiling Death Syndrome’, from Vanishing Lung Syndrome (Faber and Faber, ); ‘The Rampage’, from The Rampage (Faber and Faber, ); A. E. Housman: ‘Here are the skies, the planets seven’, Additional Poems V, in Collected Poems and Selected Prose, edited by Christopher Ricks (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, ), reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of A. E. Housman; Aldous Huxley: ‘Fifth Philosopher’s Song’, from The Collected Poems, edited by Donald Watt (Chatto and Windus, ), reprinted by permission of The Random House Group; Elizabeth Jennings: ‘Delay’, from New Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, ), reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates; Velimir Khlebnikov: from The Longer Poems of Velimir Khlebnikov (Greenwood Press, ); Robert Lowell: ‘Home After Three Months Away’, from Robert Lowell: Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Groux, ); Hugh MacDiarmid: ‘Of John Davidson’, from ‘To a Friend and Fellow-Poet’, and from ‘Crystals Like Blood’, from Selected Poems, edited by Alan Riach and Michael Grieve (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, ), reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press; Edwin Morgan: ‘Poetry’s like a gull, protesting, sheering off . .’, ‘We saw how he cheated at the Ishihara . .’, acknowledgements ix ‘Golden Apples’, ‘Submarine Demon’, ‘March’, ‘The professor- dissector . .’, ‘Early Days’, ‘Gibson Gibson . .’, ‘Why would the lord of life confine his write’, and ‘Trilobites’, from Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, ), reprinted by permission of the publisher; Adrienne Rich: ‘Planetarium’, from Collected Early Poems – (W. W. Norton, ), reprinted by permission of the publisher; Leslie Scalapino: from Way (North Point Press, ); Frederick Seidel: ‘The New Cosmology’, from These Days (Knopf, ), © , , , , , , , , by Frederick Seidel, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc; Wallace Stevens: from ‘Of Modern Poetry’, in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Knopf, ), copyright by Wallace Stevens and renewed by Holly Stevens, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc; John Wilkinson: ‘Labora- tory Test Report’, from Flung Clear: Poems in Six Books (Parataxis Editions, ), reprinted by permission of Parataxis Editions and John Wilkinson; ‘Sweetness and Light’, from Oort’s Cloud: Earlier Poems (Barque Press, ), reprinted by permission of the publisher; William Carlos Williams: ‘Some Simple Measures in the American Idiom and the Variable Foot’, from Collected Poems –, Volume II (Carcanet Press, ), © by William Carlos Williams, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders of poems published in this book. The editor and publisher apologize for any material included without permission or without appropriate acknowledgement, and would be pleased to rectify any omissions or errors brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity. R.C. St Andrews, This page intentionally left blank contents Notes on Contributors xiii Introduction Robert Crawford Rampage, or Science in Poetry Miroslav Holub ‘As Above’ Don Paterson, introduced by Andrew Riches Poetry and Virtual Realities Edwin Morgan ‘Grimoire’ Michael Donaghy, introduced by Kevin Warwick Spirit Machines: The Human and the Computational Robert Crawford ‘Biology’ Robert Crawford, introduced by Rona R. Ramsay Testament and Confessions of an Informationist W. N. Herbert ‘The Working Self’ W. N. Herbert, introduced by Martin Conway A Science of Belonging: Poetry as Ecology John Burnside ‘Steinar undir Steinahlithum’ John Burnside, introduced by R. M. M. Crawford Modelling the Universe: Poetry, Science, and the Art of Metaphor Simon Armitage ‘Circadian’ John Glenday, introduced by Eric Priest xii contents Astronomy and Poetry Jocelyn Bell Burnell ‘A Fistful of Foraminifera’ Sarah Maguire, introduced by Norman MacLeod The Act of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Poetry of Jorie Graham and

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