Astronomy and Poetry
One aspect of the IAU Symposium 260 was to look at the intersection between astronomy and the arts. And the examples are numerous, whether in paintings, music, architecture, and so on. One session was devoted to literature and music.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell from the UK gave a talk on the Monday on the link between astronomy and poetry, a topic she got so much involved with that she co-edited on book on it (darkmatter – poems of space). She is mostly interested in English poems from the last 50 years where astronomy plays a main role (“astronomy shouldn’t be a wallpaper only”) and where the science is not too inaccurate. And the examples are plenty: Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, Robinson Jeffers, Hilda Doolittle, Robert Lowell, Gwyneth Lewis, Diane Ackerman, Frederick Seidel, or Stanley Kunitz. Their poems deal with topics as diverse as radio telescopes, the scale of the universe, the Big Bang, comets, black holes or space explorations.
But there are also poets who are against astronomy for they feel the growing knowledge is dismissing the myth, an opinion shared by poet P. Dickinson. And then there are of course very few professional astronomers who write poetry, such as Rebecca Elson, who wrote poems about dark matter.
To wet your appetite, here a well known poem by Robert Frost, Fire and Ice:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Another example is Canis Major from the same author.
I should add that in other languages also there are many poets dealing with astronomy, or astronomers practicing poetry. Certainly in France, Jean-Pierre Luminet and Michel Cassé deserve mentioning.
This is an account of one of the topics presented at the Symposium 260 of the International Astronomical Union, which was held at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. Its theme: The Rôle of Astronomy in Society and Culture. You can read more posts on this symposium.