South85 is honored to introduce our very first guest blogger. Rick Mulkey is the director of the low-residency MFA Creative Writing program and the BFA Writing program at Converse College in Spartanburg, SC. He is the author of four collections of poetry, including Toward Any Darkness and Before the Age of Reason.
Michio Kaku–”The mind of God is music resonating through ten dimensional hyperspace.”
Reflection and Shadow: The Nature of the Artist’s Reality Who among us hasn’t at some point been drawn to the reflection in the mirror, or to that painting of pure light captured on the surface of a summer pond? I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of doubleness, of the other. On these cool September evenings when I pull out my telescope and point it at the sky, I’m not searching for a single star; I’m seeking a binary system, one star casting a shadow on another one we may not always see, but we know exists. Occasionally, I have taught a course designed with the goal of considering how, if at all, science and the arts might inform one another. Originally, when I started planning the course, I didn’t begin by considering the relationship science might have with literature. Instead, I started thinking about ideas and strategies the other arts shared with each other. Specifically, I looked at music and poetry. The more I read, the more scholars and composers I spoke with, the more I understood what these two sisters in the arts share. Literature, no matter what we might think, is not a set of self-contained systems, disconnected from our physical world. Instead, literature, like music, reflects the way we encounter our environment. There are many parallel patterns in which poetry and music reflect one another. Both attempt to find a language for the unknown, both attempt to make unexpected connections, both attempt to structure the flow of time. What I hadn’t expected to find, however, was what I discovered when I sat down with pianist Melanie Taylor to discuss the works of a couple of her favorite composers—Robert Muczynski and Gygorgy Ligeti. As she played some of their works and discussed with me what she thought they were attempting to do, I was struck at how they, like so many contemporary poets, desire to integrate the new information about the nature of reality. More specifically, I am thinking of how artists give voice to the theories and possibilities of modern physics. I’m reminded of the theories of physics because the physicist has the same task as the poet and the composer. As several scholars have pointed out, physics is a form of insight and as such is a form of art. In fact, in the Twentieth Century, the scientist forced all of us to reconsider the very nature of reality. One could argue that no other ideas have had a greater impact on the way we now view our world and our universe than Einstein’s theories of General and Special Relativity. Thanks to those theories we have discovered the importance of the individual observer’s frame of reference. In other words, there is no privileged point, no standard frame of reference that fits us all. Rather, our perceptions of the world are observer-dependent. My perception exists along side another’s perception and another’s perception, all existing simultaneously, all a reflection of the observer and a shadow of all those other possible worlds, a multiverse in which all the past, present and future exist in one still moment, one everlasting NOW. In a very basic way I think many people would agree that those composers Melanie played for me that day are informed by science on some level, even if indirectly. It can be seen in Muczynski’s many masks of perception and in Ligeti’s use of doubleness and echoing perspectives. As a poet and a reader of poetry, this influence can be witnessed in numerous contemporary poets from Brenda Hillman and James Merrill to Albert Goldbarth and others. In their work we find a similar synergy and unification at work that is apparent in a number of pieces by modern and contemporary composers. We find many perspectives existing and reflected in a single moment. These poets write in ways that allow the personal and autobiographical to exist in a poem in the same space and time as the lives and events of those muddling through the ancient Egyptian dynasties or centuries-old Chinese empires. According to the theories of physics governing the universe, in one heartbeat we can traverse the cosmos. In the works of these poets we do in fact traverse the universe in a mere few words and lines. A visual way to think of this theme of simultaneity that appears in many of the poems of the last quarter century is to think of a palimpsest, a parchment or tablet that has been inscribed several times. Its previous writings are imperfectly erased and remain visible, if not legible. A palimpsest therefore simultaneously reveals multiple ideas contained in one line occupying the same space and time. Though this view of reality may seem illogical or even confusing to some readers, I think it is fairly accurate. Reality as we have come to understand it in the early Twenty First century is a far more complex reality than the logical, linear, clockwork universe we had known before. Often, I hear educated people talk about how difficult or impenetrable contemporary art, music or poetry have become, but I don’t think art is more difficult or impenetrable, I simply think reality no longer provides a single perspective. Art, all forms of art, makes room for the reflections and shadows of the multiverse. As an example of how I think this scientific reality is reflected in poetry, let me end with a brief poem by the late Howard Nemerov. When I read Nemerov, I am always impressed with how he adapted earlier poetic forms and used them to express what was modern. Here in a sonnet he writes about this notion of multiple perspective captured in a single, still moment. I hope in some ways it demonstrates what I’ve been considering here. Moment Now, starflake frozen on the windowpane
All of a winter night, the open hearth
Blazing beyond Andromeda, the sea-
Anemone and the downwind seed, O moment
Hastening, halting in a clockwise dust,
The time in all the hospitals is now,
Under the arc-lights where the sentry walks
His lonely wall it never moves from now,
The crying in the cell is also now,
And now is quiet in the tomb as now
Explodes inside the sun, and it is now
In the saddle of space, where argosies of dust
Sail outward blazing, and the mind of God,
The flash across the gap of being, thinks
In the instant absence of forever: now.