Poet to Physicist in His Laboratory: Difference between revisions
Line 37: | Line 37: | ||
This poem is an invitation to a dialogue between the speaker (a poet) and a physicist. The title and first line make this | This poem is an invitation to a dialogue between the speaker (a poet) and a physicist. The title and first line make this | ||
explicit: "Poet to Physicist..." | explicit: "Poet to Physicist..." and ''Come out and talk to me.'' This is an invitation for the physicist to emerge from his laboratory and engage with the poet. The speaker wants to know the "shape" of the research occurring in this laboratory; the word shape is peculiar in this context. It could be the research, as we would normally expect, or it could refer to the physicist himself, oddly enough. To the poet, the physicist's word is full of symbols and mysteries. The attempt to build a bridge from the Humanities to the Sciences, as the speaker conveys it, is an invitation but also an acknowledgement of frustration. There are mysteries, perhaps encoded in the abstract symbols of mathematics, that the poet cannot access. |
Revision as of 17:27, 26 September 2010
Poet to Physicist in His Laboratory
by David Ignatow
Come out and talk to me for then I know into what you are shaping. Thinking is no more, I read your thoughts for a symbol: a movement towards an act. I give up on thought as I see your mind leading into a mystery deepening about you. What are you trying to discover beyond the zone of habit and enforced convention? There is the animus that spends itself on images, the most complex being convention and habit. You shall form patterns of research and bind yourself to laws within your knowledge, and always conscious of your limitations make settlement, with patience to instruct you as it always does in your research: an arrangement spanning an abyss of time, and you will find yourself patient when you are questioned.
Comments and Notes
This poem is an invitation to a dialogue between the speaker (a poet) and a physicist. The title and first line make this explicit: "Poet to Physicist..." and Come out and talk to me. This is an invitation for the physicist to emerge from his laboratory and engage with the poet. The speaker wants to know the "shape" of the research occurring in this laboratory; the word shape is peculiar in this context. It could be the research, as we would normally expect, or it could refer to the physicist himself, oddly enough. To the poet, the physicist's word is full of symbols and mysteries. The attempt to build a bridge from the Humanities to the Sciences, as the speaker conveys it, is an invitation but also an acknowledgement of frustration. There are mysteries, perhaps encoded in the abstract symbols of mathematics, that the poet cannot access.