View
38
Download
3
Category
Tags:
Preview:
DESCRIPTION
Strung Together. A collage poem constructed from sampled bits of the original poems published in the new book Riffing on Strings – Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory , published by Scriblerus Press , 2008. She couldn’t fall asleep had watched a program on PBS - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Citation preview
Strung Together
A collage poem constructed from sampled bits of the
original poems published in the new book Riffing on
Strings – Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory, published by Scriblerus
Press, 2008.
She couldn’t fall asleep had watcheda program on PBSabout string theories, membranes,parallel universes, gravity…
But maybe she just couldn’t knit.
Air is full of mistaken
stars & the wiggly half-
zeroesstripes
make when folded into
fabric
and in no time we started to unravel we spent the oddest days searching for our ends.
We were budding physicists; we were burnouts
trying to get comfortable with mystery
To verify the
absolute minimum
something,a shadow of a spasming
string,of what else to call it but
god?
Frequencies configuring space and
timenumerating our senses our skins
our desires
Flat in singularity with our undone strings…until we’re less than puff, slit by passing
planets into branes
Strongly tied a galaxy held
equations knit a symmetry of Nature
Matter and its oppositehiccup
gulped in the big lipped, ink-black hole
under swimming the eleven
stringsof a space they will
never enter through
eleven curled
membranes they can
never imagine
But what is it? what noun placed next to what verbmodified by what adverb
holds the secret?
Dark matter evidently holds a key to communicating across
dimensions
dimensions beyond the
three
up and down
side to side
back and forth
Dimensions pulled like taffy strings
At least one of these dimensions
blurs at the speed of a plucked guitar
string,becomes uniformly
invisible and able to inhabit more space than it ought
I am so tiny science has not figured out a way to define me
How am I so unreal
And yet my thread is real?
Begin with a line, remove the middle third. Remove the middle third
of the segments. Do it again and so on.
Only a dust of points remains
clutch quantacatch thread
make bed of messy everything
but the numbers will tell
The physics of livingtangles the common
there is another Universe
filled with old rubber bands
Let me finger their eurhythmytic.
And you’ll see I’m self-thought
The undulating
lines of pure
thought that
describethe theory
of everything
Broken strings littered the floors of physics departments everywhere
Rolled hems stiffening in the wind, strung out upon a sagging stretch of line
Only their orbital keeps them from falling into recurring dreams.
To this day there is still nothing to prove.
Many strings compared to one
when the universe shrinks into a dot
the string’s end has frayed into ten strands,which themselves can be unwound into 26.
String Theory positsno events when it isn’t metaphor, donut twists
in matter – 10 to the minus 33 cm—
And in the toy chest
of infinities
both larger and smaller sets can be found side by side
On the other hand, silly string may underpin much
of the universe
string that’s super symmetric particles
passing through your house and body
(I’m picking up super vibrations
from my GUT to my TOE)
A maddening locomotion
imperatives imbuing
shimmering
Angels wracking their
branes to tune the
superstringsof their harp’s fundamentals
remember that all motion is trying to be perfected, to be still
to loop and loop
in wavicles
of joy
that make me
matter
How many possible routes, how many maps rolled into tubes, tubes pulled taught into strings
folding into points?
Trying to calculate Horizon, the line strongbetween water and night
the whirl of charmed quarks
Extra dimensions,
parallel universes, the whole
over-loadedwagon held
together with tiny bits of string
those fickers which are returnally reprodictive of themselves
we can’t renounce the invisible, the fluid foundation
of the solidly seen. We can only imagine
and speak in shrinking
untruths
the ordering will comethe tight weave will expose its structure
and dimensions will blink our eyes
Wobbly fibres coaxed from eternity
You were unraveled in childhood until you were everything.
Strung TogetherSampled contributors to this collage poem: Cecilia Vicuña and James
O’Hern, Colette Inez, Dave Morrison, Joseph Radke, Kathleen M. Heideman, Bruce Holland Rogers, Michelle Morgan, Robert Borski,
Sandy Beck, Elaine Terranova, Diane Shipley DeCillis, Lauren Gunderson, Cherryl E. Garner, Deborah P. Kolodji, Mary Margaret
Serpento, ushi, oino sakai, assu, and Lucinda Borkenhagen, Michael Ricciardi, David Hurst, Brenda Hillman, Jeff P. Jones, Heather Holliger, Linda Nemec Foster, Susan Zwinger, Wendy
Vardaman, Christine Klocek-Lim, Cleo Fellers Kocol, Beret Skorpen-Tifft. Also: James Joyce (Finnegans Wake)
Collaged poem & power point by M. Ricciardi
Riffing on Strings – Creative Writing Inspired by String Theorywas edited by Sean Miller and Shveta Verma, and published by
Scriblerus Press, 2008
• Winner of an IPPY Silver Medal (Creative Non-fiction) 2008/9
Recommended