Browsing: Poetry

How do we cope with the fact that the universe is dying? We find the most comfort in forming connections, creating the world we want to live in, and valuing the time we have together on this isolated yet beautiful planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse, a celebration of the wonder of reality through science and poetry, entailed a joyful collaboration with Australian musician and writer Nick Cave and Brazilian artist and filmmaker Daniel Bruson on an animated poem that reflects on this fundamental question of being alive. BUT WE HAD MUSIC by Maria Popova Right… read article

“It started as a nearly silent sound…”

At its best, a close relationship is a partnership of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, supported by a network of trust and tenderness. It profoundly changes a person and yet helps them become more authentic as assumptions give way to presence and issues are transformed into open connections. In his slim and remarkable book Twice Alive (public library), poet, geologist, and translator Forrest Gander uses inspiration from the natural world to create a poetic “ecology of intimacies,” honoring lichens’ “extreme frugality in drought” and the “long soft sarongs of moss” as a means “to rediscover the essence of… read article

“Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself.”

In its pursuit of explaining things that previously seemed beyond words, does reason stifle the imagination? Can rationalism coexist with a reverence for mystery? Two great poems with opposing views, composed over 200 years apart—“Lamia” by John Keats and “Water” by Philip Larkin—address these vexed questions through the entangled concepts of water and light. Nautilus Members […]