Beyond the Bench: Poetry Edition

In college I took a poetry writing class for fun. I really enjoyed the writing and editing process though now I can't bring myself to read my poems about smoking Pall Malls and rebelling against gender norms. During an office visit my wonderful professor recommended that I use my unique background in science as inspiration in my poems. But I was not really in a place scientifically and as a fledging poet to fully realize her vision. But what I took away from her suggestion was the possibility to merge my two interests – how science and poetry are not inherently polar opposites.

I have heard, mainly in abstract terms, how art and poetry can change the way one thinks and approaches science. As someone who enjoys painting and writing, I also unfortunately struggle to imagine how this is done practically – I think about science and then when I need a break, I paint. Sometimes I paint about science and technology but I have not found a way, consciously at least, to bring art into science (aside from some nice Illustrator images for presentations).

And so I have come to highly respect and appreciate those who can merge the two worlds and by doing so, enrich both. In that vein, I will be posting about some poets who were also scientists (or scientists who were also poets) or who brought scientific themes to their poetry.

Margaret Cavendish Lucas was a philosopher, writer, and scientist of the seventeenth century. In 1667 she sparked a debate by asking to attend a session of the Royal Society of London and was eventually allowed to attend to see Robert Boyle demonstrate several experiments. She wrote about topics such as the scientific method and how the matter that makes up humans, rather than a divine God, enabled us to think. Below is one of her more famous poems.

Of Many Worlds in This World

Just like as in a nest of boxes round,
Degrees of sizes in each box are found.
So, in this world, may many others be
Thinner and less, and less still by degree:
Although they are not subject to our sense,
A world may be no bigger than two-pence.
Nature is curious, and such works may shape,
Which our dull senses easily escape:
For creatures, small as atoms, may be there,
If every one a creature's figure bear.
If atoms four, a world can make, then see
What several worlds might in an ear-ring be:
For millions of those atoms may be in
The head of one small, little, single pin.
And if thus small, then ladies may well wear
A world of worlds, as pendants in each ear.

Her writing strikes me as straightforward for the time – less than 50 years after Shakespeare was producing the works that would perplex middle and high schoolers for centuries. The poem encapsulates the excitement of scientific discovery. Things at the cellular level may be just as exciting as the planets and space, which seems to capture the imagination of the general public much more. With the line: “A world may be no bigger than a two-pence,” I envision a bustling cellular city in the vein of London circa the industrial revolution: people pushing their wares on carts along axon tracks, the protein patrolmen monitoring the streets for people in the wrong place, and the occasional bacterial thief that threatens to disturb the whole society.

The last lines, “ladies may well wear a world of worlds, as pendants in each ear” evoke the aristocracy to which Cavendish belonged. And just as we may be blind to the cellular and atomic worlds underlying our being, aristocrats were blind to the troubles as well as essentiality of the working class. The line “our dull senses easily escape” could be a critique of her class and the dullness of being a woman in a time when women had no access to science. Though I could be misinterpreting it through my modern lens, “Nature is curious,” suggests that it is in human nature, which also encompasses women, to be fascinated by the world around them.