His Highness Dines on the Physics of Poetry

Melissa Loewinger, one of The Daily Princetonian's staff writers, attended a poetry-lovers' dinner / discussion which brought together creative-writing professor and poet Paul Muldoon and close to a dozen student invitees.

"You may call me Paul. It's either that or 'Your Highness,'" intoned the Irish-born pontificator prior to sharing his bon mots concerning the relationship he perceives between science and poetry in an informal session called "The Physics of Poetry."

Mr. Muldoon tells Ms. Loewinger the title "was meant to be a slightly provocative [one], I suppose . . . But the basic idea is that poetry is in certain ways much more akin to construction — activities that involve construction, architecture, engineering — and that all of these activities are mindful of the laws of physics . . . The word 'poem,' in fact, means nothing more than 'a construct,'" iterates the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, "a piece of structural engineering that is subject to the laws of physics."

(A construct, he says? Here I thought poetry had something to do with composition, arrangement, and lexical selection. Perhaps that's why I'm blacklisted by Misogynist Mel & Her Mincing Minions when it comes to grants and awards? Dayam.)

Ms. Loewinger elaborates further (predominantly in an after-the-fact email), "Muldoon also linked poetry to chemistry, comparing poetic elements, like the components of a simile or metaphor, to the materials in a scientific experiment . . . The literary units are like 'chemical elements,' he explained, that fuse to create 'a spark, a chemical reaction.' This spark is the fuel for poetry — 'a little explosion. Or a big one.'"

Sound familiar? "I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide." (Right. T. S. Eliot already cleared the scientific air when he espoused his "catalytic" theory of poetry in his essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" [The Sacred Wood], arguably Ol' Possum's best-known one wherein he further states that the poet's mind is, in fact "a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.")

Now, that's rather more provocative, IMO, given the fact Mr. Eliot inked his observations almost a century ago (particularly since the poet's poet concludes: "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things"). Hrm. Wonder if Canada's own Flavour-of-the-Minute-Man Christian Bök's even heard of Mr. Eliot? Welp, now he has. Maybe he should read something besides his owns scrawtchings on the chip-off-the-ol'-blockhead board? Splat chance.

Shantih, shantih, shantih . . .

<*The Sound of One Shoe Dropping*>