So, over many years I wrote my answer to the question, how would The Nature of Things sound today? I brought what I had learned from my formal education in physics to the poems. I’m proud to say that it’s finally coming out in chapbook form in March of 2018 (but is available for pre-order today)!
Over the years I had seen excerpts of Lucretius’s book-length poem, but before 2008, the translations I read did not particularly grab me. I knew that the word “atom” came from Democritus (perhaps also Leucippus), and that it meant “indivisible”—as a noun, not an adjective, as in, the smallest indivisible piece of matter (now I prefer the more accurate “uncuttable,” same deal with the part of speech). I did not know much then of Epicurean philosophy—actually, I knew a great deal of Epicurean philosophy, because it is essentially the philosophy of modern science and contemporary society, but I did not know that it originated with a Greek named Epicurus. He took atomic theory and ran with it, fleshing out an entire natural philosophy based on the simple principles that nothing comes from nothing, and nothing is reduced to nothing (reminiscent of the pithy statement of the Conservation of Matter we learn in grade school, where “matter is neither created nor destroyed”). And Lucretius was the Roman poet who, approximately three hundred years after Epicurus, translated Epicurean philosophy into Latin hexameters in his 7500-line poem, De Rerum Natura/The Nature of Things.
Serendipitously,
this (2008) was the year that a brand-new translation of The Nature of Things by David Slavitt became available. (I have
since read A. E. Stallings rhyming translation that came out in 2007—what a
wonderful revival Lucretius had at that moment!) Slavitt’s version spoke to me
more than any other—it was modern, and there was music in it. I heard a voice
in there, likely it was mostly Lucretius and partly Slavitt, but it was
speaking to me and I desperately wanted to join the conversation. Slavitt showed us what the ancient poem might sound like in modern language, but I
wanted to bring contemporary physics into the picture.
But we
moved from the Arizona desert to start a life in rural Indiana, and that
radical life change put the project on hold. It would have become one of many
abandoned projects if my good friend and poet Emily Koehn hadn’t suggested in early
2013 that we begin a daily exchange. Trying to keep up with a poem a day had me
scrambling for old drafts, and I found two beginnings, one an elementary
overview of the particles in physics today (this became “Enter: Matter,”
published in Conjunctions in print) and one an
ode to the electron (this became “Orbiting the Nucleus,” published in Waxwing). I had a lot of work to do if I
wanted to “answer” Lucretius by addressing all the marvelous and strange tiny
particles that physics describes today.
In 2013, I
began a study of The Nature of Things
in earnest. Stephen Greenblatt’s award-winning 2011 book The Swerve, a history of the text of the The Nature of Things, gave me a deeper appreciation of the book I
now consider integral to my life. I dove into scholarly texts. I read numerous
translations. I lived and breathed Lucretius.
In 2014, I
took a first draft of the manuscript to Colrain Poetry Conference in Truchas,
New Mexico. At that point, I considered my project to be a “dialogue” with
Lucretius, but that was more in my mind than on the page. There were found
pieces, selections of text from Slavitt’s translation, then my poems in
juxtaposition, in a call and response format, but it was still too loose. Not
long after, a more overt dialogue was completed and published in Conjunctions online as, “Atomos, World Composed: Canonical Dialogue with Lucretius.” Here is an excerpt from this (with Slavitt's Lucretius in italics) from the poem in the center of the book:
[…]
Consider now the air, which, at every hour, changes itself in numberless ways…
What earthworm and lime have to do with the atomic purr of the natural world.
Heavy earth, the mud of creation.
What Queen Anne’s Lace has to do with the colliding protons of the natural world.
Ether above the breezes, invulnerable to storms and tempests…
What worn hands and children have to do with the tera-electron-volts of the natural world.
The ether glides with an unchanging and tranquil sweep on high…
What spinach seeds and manure have to do with the glued nuclei of the natural world.
Its movement slow and unswerving, like the Black Sea’s constant current.
What rotting Brandywine tomatoes have to do with the matter-antimatter annihilation of the natural world.
What we know about other parts of nature all of which works in the same way with the same laws,
What little bluestem has to do with the electron hum of the natural world.
not only here on earth but up in the sky…
What goose eggs and the ground after a frost have to do with the whole fermionic cry of the natural world.
[…]
In 2016, I
workshopped the manuscript a second time at the Vermont College of Fine Arts
Manuscript Conference, with Kevin Young as my instructor. Kevin has a knack for
thinking about books, not mere
collections. A version very close to the one I brought to Vermont is the
forthcoming chapbook from Finishing Line Press, World,
Composed.
If you're interested, order a copy of World,
Composed today. Pre-publication sales determine the size of the press
run, so reserve your copy now!
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