I've long been a fan of poet Kimiko Hahn, and so I was delighted to go hear her read and discuss the intersections of poetry and science with Janna Levin, with whom I was unfamiliar, at Housing Works Bookstore.
As often happens at these events, my reading list just got a little longer. Hahn read mostly from her newest collection, Toxic Flora, and talked about her use of the New York Times science reporting to inspire and inform her poetry. I'm a big fan of Brain Fever, her earlier work, and this one sounds compelling and startling as well. She's an essential poet for me.
Now I don't think I'll ever understand exactly what a black hole is, but like a lot of scientifically uninformed people, I'm fascinated by the idea. And in explaining the concept of a black hole (essentially gravity suffering a "catastrophic collapse" and yielding something black on the outside, but perhaps light on the inside, and bigger inside than outside -- I hope I'm not bastardizing the concept) Levin made an interesting point -- which is that you cannot fully comprehend what a black hole is without understanding the math behind the concept. (My mathematical education ended with introductory statistics in college -- which I did find fascinating -- but left me well short of the advanced calculus needed to shed light on black holes.) Levin exposed me a little, from my layperson's place in the back of the audience, to the beauty and story telling capabilities of mathematics. She said trying to summarize the science behind a black hole to someone who doesn't comprehend the math is somewhat akin to translating a text from an original language to a different one. Something will always be lost in or left out of the translation.
So, in addition to Hahn's latest collection, I've added Levin's Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space to my reading list as well.
