Cosmos
 

In this dense book of black holes,
string theory and universes
which could’ve been if certain elements
were less abundant, or even less amorous,
I work down through leathery paragraphs
till my mind becomes neutrino-soft,
searching for unseen dimensions:

one in which Earth is still,
half the planet lit in day,
the other cold, never-ending night;
a world without my various flaws,
where I fail to notice other men’s wives;
and one where an old man who calls himself Willie Yeats
rattles a cup and asks for change,
telling me as I try to leave,
“Y’know, I used to write poems too”;

an ever so slightly altered place
in which this poem explains at length
the scientific principles of multiple worlds,
of quantum mechanics and wave function,
objective reality and paradoxes
that could never,
in any context,
be misconstrued as poetic;

a universe in which I’m not bored
of watching the Irish football team.
In fact, George Best plays for us.
He’s cleaned up his act,
drinks only water (at worst, flavoured).
He takes the ball in midfield,
hips his way past four English defenders
to slot it home and win for us
the 1966 World Cup.

Hello Trevor,

This is predigested food.

Yeah!

Hi Yves S L,

I have no idea what you mean.

Trevor

Trevor,

Predigested food means standard surface-level popular information that has already been thoroughly worked over and presented many times in a similar manner. It is a bit like compiling excerpts from a breezy physics book that one would find in an airport bookshop and adding a little bit of imaginative speculative tangents which makes it a bit word-salady and some lineation.

Even if the poem attempts ironic self-reflexive meta distancing by referring to its own nature as predigested food, it still tastes the same but flavoured with old post-modern tricks.

There is some personal participation with the George Best motif, but that does not really need all that theoretical physics wrapping around a basic emotional need like dreaming to fulfill wishes, because as it stands, yeah, George Best, but it could be anything substituting for the common motif of "sliding doors": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliding_Doors

Thanks for the more detailed feedback. I appreciate the time you've put into giving me a sense of your experience with the poem. I'll keep it in mind and see what others think before deciding whether to bother with another draft.

Many thanks,

Trevor

Hi, Trev—

I enjoyed your poem. I especially like how your N enters his reverie while reading a technical physics textbook.

My only question is, “Do you really need S3?” It doesn’t seem to be pulling its weight and strikes me as an interruption of the more specific and interesting discussion in S2 and S4.

FWIW—
Glenn

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for commenting. On first impression, I'm inclined to keep the third stanza, but I'll give it proper thought. I wanted to bring things down to the very micro level there, focusing on something relatively trivial (the writing of this poem) as compared to the more grander-scheme approach in the other stanzas. Did the element of humour I tried to get in there at the end of the third stanza work for you, or did it fall flat?

Hi, Trev—

I think S1 does a good job of introducing the multiverse idea. S3 just seems to me to belabor it, and the self-referential comment about the physics not being poetic struck me as perhaps what Yves had in mind as a “post-modern trick,” almost as though you are apologizing for the complete lack of imagery in this stanza.

I like the alternative cameos of W. B. Yeats and George Best. The gentle humor in S2 and S4 work well for me.

Small nit: In S2L9, how about replacing the final semicolon with a period and putting it inside the quotation marks? (Do you call them “inverted commas?”)

Glenn

Thanks for following up, Glenn.

Regarding the semicolons, I wanted them to easily signal each next element of change, so a full stop seemed less appropriate, in a way, though I do see how changing it to a full stop within the quotation marks would draw less unnecessary attention to itself.

Unless I change the wording/grammar of what follows, using a full stop would mean another nit would likely emerge: the rest of the poem up until the mention of George Best wouldn't be a proper sentence even though I'd be presenting it as a complete sentence. Hmm, I'll see....

(I tend to call them quotation marks, though I've probably also referred to them as inverted commas.)

Thanks again, Glenn. Really appreciate it.

All the best,

Trev

Hi Trev. I like it, but I agree with the suggested removal of S3. It just waylays the reader unnecessarily, I think.

I would also cut the last two lines of S2, but maybe that's just me.

Cheers

David