Poems

Tried to answer .. .

denny — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:15:04 GMT

before you Deleted for editing.

It's funny actually, that we are getting more "discussion" on science than I normally do when I actually post a poem about science.

Ask Me No More
by Thomas Carew

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep,
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me nor more where those stars light,
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixéd become, as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

d;-)

Re: Phew

TheEnginist — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:36:58 GMT

Thomas Carew:

"Ask me no more whither doth stray/The golden atoms of the day"

Phew - when did this post . . .

denny — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:02:08 GMT

turn into a discussion of particle and Quantum physics ? I thought we were discussing "Poetry" by Marianne Moore ?

LOL

d;-)

Re: The energy of a photon

TheEnginist — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:24:45 GMT

The atom can also undergo a non-radiative decay via vibration or collision.

The energy of a photon

denny — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:50:26 GMT

Photons do exist at many enegy levels, even though they all have the same velocity (c), but always with "descrete" quantum values. But since the Photon has no mass, it's energy is a function of its frequency/ wavelength and the Plank Constant, as you noted We need to be a little careful because a Photon also has angular momentum to account for as well as spin - but that's way beyond our discussion here.

My point, regarding velocity is that (in a vacuum) a photon exhibits only one velocity (c). And when it comes to "rest" through absorption by an atom, all of its energy is transferred to that atom which must now exist at at higher energy state unless it gives off all or a portion of that energy through re-radiation.

d;-)

Re: Photon contribution to "rest mass" of another object

Vergilius — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:52:02 GMT

Well, denny, it's probably not that important but I would hate to have all the poets here imagine that the energy of a photon is a function of its velocity. Although my analysis of the number of views of posts below the top level indicates that few will notice. Anyway, the energy of a photon is given by the product of its frequency and Planck's constant.

Best wishes, V.

Since you mentioned the solar eclipse . .

denny — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:15:01 GMT

and were discussing the impact of Quantum Theory on the "meaning of reality" . . .

"But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat. "We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad" "How do you know I’m mad?'" said Alice. "You must be,” said the Cat. "or you wouldn’t have come here"

- Lewis Carroll

The Greek writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, once said - "A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free". That's the way it is with reality.

So long as you stay fixed in one place, never adventuring out beyond the comfortable confines of your well-ordered beliefs, you will remain forever a prisoner of your own making. Real madness is to simply accept that everything we belief is true and that there can be no other reality. And if we cannot change our "reality", let us at least change the way we think about it. As Albert Einstein noted - "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

I find myself a captive
held by gravity's thin glue
tight in its snug embrace
upon a tiny blue-green sphere
floating in the vast blackness.

Now, imagining myself
among the "ancient ones"
under the benign influence
of an endless blue sky
illuminated by the warming sun.

When suddenly the moon
casts its cold shadow on our world,
taking its first tenuous bite
from my comfortable reality
as the blackness spreads.

Shadows became razor sharp
fingers turn into claws - the hair
standing up on arms turns
people into grotesque beasts.
the light grows strange - unnatural.

The sun now gone
shades of night descend
upon the eerie landscape
chilling the air as if by the breath
of some haunting apparition

My world turned upside-down
a faint glow around the horizon
as the three cosmic spheres
slow-danced to unheard music
while the stars appeared in mid-day.

Blacker than space itself
the disc of the sun sprouts
a fringe of pink lace as
long gossamer threads
leap from its surface.

Then suddenly - a flash of light
the sun become a diamond ring
a golden circle with a spot of brilliance
as the suns rays find their way between
some high mountains on the moon.

Finally, reluctantly, the moon
releases its unwilling captive and
the three worlds go on their separate ways
and my reality return as before
except never really the same again.

And the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question about Life, the Universe and Everything is . . . 42.
(“The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”). Why not ?

d;-)

Re: Photon contribution to "rest mass" of another object

JohnCanaday — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:05:35 GMT

You are probably wise to give up that Sisyphean task. But I am sure I could have learned a great deal from your efforts. Thanks again.

Photon contribution to "rest mass" of another object

denny — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:41:31 GMT

We all recognize that Photons have energy associated with their velocity (c). So when a photon is absorbed by another "body" - the energy that the photon did possess related to it's velocity must now become a part of the body by which it was absorbed.

The problem with considering the "mass" of a photon in the conventional sense is that the theory of relativity would "forbid" it from traveling at the speed of light, which it obviously does - by definition - since it is light.

We could also get into a lengthy discussion about Quantum Theory and what it has to say about our ability to determine "reality" vs "perception" - but every time I have tried to explain that here I am told that I am engaging in some kind of "mysticism" and that I really don't have a handle on "reality", "facts" and "objectivity". So I have given up try to explain Schrodinger and Heisenberg.

d;-)

Re: One slight correction. . .

JohnCanaday — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:20:28 GMT

Thanks for the correction, Denny. It would have been less confusing for me to say that the eclipse observation confirmed that light has momentum. And your account of the theory behind the observation was certainly more lucid and full than mine. I gather, though, that there is a distinction between "rest mass," which light does not have, and "restless mass" (or momentum), which a photon does have and which allows it to contribute to the rest mass of an object that absorbs it. It seems that it is also reasonable (though not widespread) to define mass in terms of its response to a gravitational field, in which case light would be considered to have mass.

Thanks also for your kind words about the rest of the post. Much appreciated!

Re: One slight correction. . .

denny — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:43:12 GMT

Actually, both the Sun and the Moon, having mass, cause a curvature in Space-Time - as does the earth and the rest of the planets as well. Space-Time is "distorted" in the vicinity of any massive body. The greater the mass, the greater the distortion. Hoever - we still can't exactly explain was "mass" is - only it's effects. The same way we don't actually know what Gravity is, except that in a vaccum, it is offset by inertial mass.

But you are correct regarding my statement. When the moon completely blocked out the Sun, light from stars "behind" the Sun could be seen, meaning that their light was being "bent" by the curvature of Space-Time by the Sun.

d;-)

Re: One slight correction. . .

TheEnginist — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:16:24 GMT

Denny--

I know you really know this, so you must have had a momentary lapse: It was the sun's mass, not the moon's mass, that caused the space-time curvature. The moon merely blotted out the sun, allowing the star behind the sun to be seen.

One slight correction. . .

denny — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:01:03 GMT

"This jousting between traditional versifiers and champions of vers libre seems to me to point to another struggle going on as Moore wrote: physicists grappling with the limits of objectivity. In 1919, when Moore first published “Poetry,” observations of a solar eclipse in South America confirmed Einstein’s contention that light had mass, highlighting the importance of observational frames of reference. During the same period, in quantum mechanics, it was becoming increasingly apparent in observing subatomic processes that the act of observation altered what was being looked at: the observer was part of the system under observation. "

Actually, light does not have mass. What the observation of the solar eclipse demonstrated was that the moon has mass and confirmed Einstein's contention that space-time is "bent" in the vicinity of objects that do have mass - like the moon - and it is because of this "bending" of space-time that even the massless photons of light, following what are "curved lines" of "gravity" in the vicinity of the moon, will seem to bend.

Other than that, an excellent review.

d;-)

The Genuine Article

JohnCanaday — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:35:25 GMT

As other's have pointed out, Moore frames the poem with references to "the genuine." It seems to be both the most distinctive feature of the genre and the nicest thing she can say about it. But what does it mean? zinya (in the “importance of real toads” thread) contrasts “genuine” with “authentic” (the third definition of “genuine” in the OED) and suggests that it means something closer to “valuable.” This makes good sense, particularly if we narrow “valuable” even further to “useful,” since that is the quality Moore ascribes to “Hands that can grasp, eyes / that can dilate, hair that can rise . . . ” (all of which seem to be, syntactically, at least, immediate instances of “the genuine”). But why would poetry’s greatest claim be to offer a place for the useful? And useful for what? The more I try to pin down what Moore means by “genuine,” the less I seem to know what it means in the context of the poem.

“Authentic,” for instance, also refers to something authorized, bearing some sort of Seal of Approval (the poet’s?). The speaker is the ultimate authority in a poem, but a subjective, therefore dubious one. Surely Moore’s didactic (some have even called it preachy) tone in the poem is an open invitation for us to Question Authority.

It’s also possible to read “genuine” as referring to “real” things, “phenomena” from the natural world (which Moore so loves to describe in other poems and here represented by hands, eyes, hair, and then bats, elephants, horses, wolves, critics, baseball fans, and statisticians) as opposed to derivative or merely fanciful things. This coincides with the OED’s first definition of “genuine” as “natural.” The root, also, leans this way--“gen: to beget, produce, be born”--generated naturally--an interesting echo of the poet as “maker.”

This works nicely in one way, since a poet’s “making” has often been thought of as an imitation of the natural world, and poems (true poems) would in this sense be “imaginary [man-made] gardens” capable of containing “real toads.” Yet in another sense, bearing and making are quite different: one a process identified with nature, the other involving art and artifice. Moore seems to be pointing this out in the first example of the genuine she offers: the insistently human (or at least primate) “hands that can grasp.” In this way, she evokes the long debate over the relationship of words to things, of poems to the natural (genuine) world.

This debate was certainly of some moment at the moment Moore wrote “Poetry”: a struggle for the soul of poetry, between those who emphasized the artifice of poetry and those who saw poetry as a means of conveying “real toads.” This would be something like the difference between Yeats’ circus animals and Whitman’s leaves of grass (speaking of great and insistent revisers). Moore’s poem ducks and weaves rhetorically and syntactically, and even formally, insisting on its artifice and downplaying it at the same time. Her syllabic form embraces the role of the poet as fabricator (and the inspiration and restriction that goes along with fulfilling an arbitrary pattern, trying to make it feel necessary and meaningful) and rejects it, via sentences that wrench and enjamb against the syllable count; and then, of course, she repeatedly breaks the syllabic pattern itself and even, in the middle stanza, the line count.

This jousting between traditional versifiers and champions of vers libre seems to me to point to another struggle going on as Moore wrote: physicists grappling with the limits of objectivity. In 1919, when Moore first published “Poetry,” observations of a solar eclipse in South America confirmed Einstein’s contention that light had mass, highlighting the importance of observational frames of reference. During the same period, in quantum mechanics, it was becoming increasingly apparent in observing subatomic processes that the act of observation altered what was being looked at: the observer was part of the system under observation.

“Poetry” reflects a similar emphasis on self-referentiality, turning the lens of poetry on itself. Moore quotes and alludes and (again, as zinya observes so finely) dialogues with offstage figures and skillfully creates an impression that the real subject is always just behind or beyond what is actually being said: a kind of speaker-chasing-its-tail experience.

I’d say big part of Moore’s effort, therefore, centers on an awareness that the project--writing a poem that defines what poetry is--is absurd. Her final condensation strikes me as a natural extension of the joke: pushing the absurdity to an extreme (not only will I define an entire genre in a single poem, but I’ll do it in three lines!). And to drive the point home, she includes the original version in the notes, so no one will miss the build-up to the “punch-line” version of the poem.

In the end, a “genuine” definition of itself seems to be exactly what poetry can’t deliver. But Moore’s use of the term serves as an ingenious (dare I say “useful”?), if disingenuous, device to inspire self-reflection on our efforts to define what it is we are making when we make poetry.