As Sean has mentioned, April is Poetry Month. The event comes with its very own poster, featuring a quote from one of my favorite poems:
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Appropriate participation involves not just reading poetry, but trying a hand at composition as well. And what better venue than on a global refrigerator? The half-life of a poem on the refrigerator is fairly short. Magnets have a tendency to drift away if you spend too much time ruminating; it’s probably better to aim for a haiku than a sonnet. I’ve made my contribution (buried somewhere in the image below). I was severely hampered, as the word “quantum” is nowhere to be found. Not even a “black”? How’s a physicist supposed to work under such conditions? Someone should make a version with a larger vocabulary.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Magnetic-poetry sonnets have a long and distinguished history.
April 14th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
That line reminds me of the Lawerence Krauss paper which said we may have brought about the end of the universe. Or was it bring the end nearer? Not my area of expertise.
April 14th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Personally, I think the line of Prufrock most relevant to cosmology is this:
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
Which CLEARLY anticipates slow roll inflation, roughly sixty years before anyone else…
And if you want to use this as a witty opening to a talk, you have to cite me (and Tom E. for that matter.)
April 15th, 2009 at 4:38 am
“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.”
- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
April 15th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Me, I prefer my poetry ’simple’:
http://www.mystanza.com/id34.html
April 17th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Can be even more phun when you use a 6′ section of whiteboard and a few thousand word magnets. When i retired, i took it with me, because everyday is a day for a poem.