{"id":15045,"date":"2013-12-18T17:03:27","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T22:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15045"},"modified":"2013-12-18T17:16:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T22:16:51","slug":"midweek-sciencepoetry-break-diane-ackerman-night-letter-to-loren-eiseley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/midweek-sciencepoetry-break-diane-ackerman-night-letter-to-loren-eiseley\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Science\/Poetry Break: Diane Ackerman, “Night Letter to Loren Eiseley”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JaguarCorrect: no Midweek Music Break this week. I’ve been working on this year’s Quirky<\/del> Eclectic Christmas Mix, which will show up here on Saturday, so am a little burnt out on music at the moment. :)<\/p>\n

Instead…<\/p>\n

I’ve been re-reading Carl Sagan’s\u00a0Broca’s Brain<\/em><\/a>, from 1979, which deals mostly with the edges which lie between science and, well, everything else. In one chapter, he discusses science\u00a0fiction<\/em>: what he likes and what he hates about it. And I came across this curious claim: “…in the verse of Diane Ackerman can be glimpsed the prospect of a mature astronomical poetry, fully conversant with standard science-fiction themes.”<\/p>\n

Eh?<\/em> I thought.\u00a0Diane Ackerman writes science-fiction poetry?!?<\/em> This turns out to be the case, all right — or at least, she\u00a0has<\/em> done so. I refer you to her collection called\u00a0Jaguar of Sweet Laughter<\/em>, for example, which includes (among much else) excerpt from a complete cycle, perhaps<\/del> a collection of its own, called\u00a0The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Jaguar of Sweet Laughter<\/em>, I also came across the poem below. Not strictly speaking a “science-fiction poem,” nevertheless it does feature an imagined correspondence with one of the great workers at those edges between science and “everything else.”<\/p>\n

Night Letter to Loren Eiseley<\/strong><\/p>\n

All night an illness barred me
\nfrom that loam-rich sleep
\nwe mammals are born to,
\nwe who lie flat for eight hours
\nin darkness, then rise, barely rested,
\nfor half a sun, watch color TV
\nbecause ancestors had eyes cued
\nto ripening fruit, laze on platforms
\nin the sun, and still marvel
\nat hand-me-down miracles like birth.<\/p>\n

Near dawn, I took your Immense Journey<\/em>
\nfrom the shelf, and found myself soon
\nwith lantern-jawed humans, trapped
\nin the Lost Horizon of our past,
\nwith deft orb-weavers, oracular fish,
\nand marsh birds that stilt
\nfrom pond to pond. Then, nodding
\nin ricochet delight, I feasted
\non the spellbinding fruit you grew—
\nthat way of beholding
\nwhich is a form of prayer,
\nand, on the still white winter morning,
\nknew I would carry its seeds
\nto an unworldly place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Diane Ackerman [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Correct: no Midweek Music Break this week. I’ve been working on this year’s Quirky Eclectic Christmas Mix, which will show up here on Saturday, so am a little burnt out on music at the moment. :) Instead… I’ve been re-reading Carl Sagan’s\u00a0Broca’s Brain, from 1979, which deals mostly with the edges which lie between science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2252,95,251],"tags":[1438,1600],"class_list":{"0":"post-15045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-midweek-music-break","7":"category-science-medicine","8":"category-poetry-writing_cat","9":"tag-diane-ackerman","10":"tag-carl-sagan","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3UF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15045"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15050,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15045\/revisions\/15050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}