Let There Be Cosmology

Another idea that interests me is that artists (poets included) should keep up with the cosmology (in the widest sense) of the times. Should poems reflect the world—or, more accurately, the idea of the world—that contemporary people actually live in?

This becomes an especially thorny question in 2008, because obviously not everyone agrees as to what the world is. Some people believe this world was created by, and is presided over by, God. Some think the world is nothing but matter. Some people are aware of the discoveries/hypotheses of quantum physics, such as string theory and M theory and etc. Some are not. And most people, no matter which of these other groups they fall into, also subscribe more than they think to a basic animal faith in the uncomplicated solidity of things. Is this relevant to poetry? Is it apparent in any given poem what version of the world the poet lives in? What should poets do with all this?

One very interesting angle on this is to, in some way, write about the clash of cosmologies that is occurring now, about the desire to reconcile string theory and religion and the ordinary common-sense, animal-faith reality we all experience everyday. This is something I want to explore in poems. Another way (which I have already tried to do, but which I hope I will do more successfully in the future) is to roll these all up into a single plump mega-cosmology.

To put it another way: if the poet's job is to re-imagine the world, must a poet in 2008 keep informed about what the sciences say, and what the religions say, and etc.? Must the scientific imagination be included in the poetic imagination, somehow? My vote is yes, though allowing for the fact that some poets (myself at the top of the list) will inevitably misunderstand the science.

Some will argue that no such awareness is necessary, but I'm not so sure. I very much disagree with the view that there are only a few basic subjects for poems: love, mortality, nature, etc. I think poems can be about anything, but even if one accepts the idea that there are only a few subjects to write about, it must be recognized that the poet's cosmology will color even those traditional topics. A poem about death written by a poet who believes in Heaven is very different from one written by a materialist atheist. A love poem written by someone who believes the whole "soul mate" thing from the Symposium will differ from one written by someone who thinks we are only dying animal products of the Big Bang. More subtly, a nature poem written by someone who simply takes sense perception for granted in an ordinary, animal-faith way will differ from one written by someone steeped in the frothy subatomic mysteries of particle physics.

It seems to me there are two basic ways to incorporate cosmology. The first, as noted, is to actually write about it, foregrounding cosmological ideas in the main content of the poem. The second is to let cosmology serve simply as backdrop. This happens whether the poet likes it or not, so my project is to keep aware of this as I modify my writing style (if in fact I manage to do so). I study Buddhism and other religious mysticism and stuff like string theory (in its popularized, de-mathed form), but do these things make it into my work?

I fear that the lazy, consumerist brand of materialism has crept so fully into this culture that, even though my head is filled with thoughts of Buddha Nature and dimensional membranes, I really live—and write—as just one more citizen of Cheap Plastic Strip-Mall America.

All this is to say that I really have to try harder, when I'm writing, to remember what world I mean to imagine.