The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder Through Science & Poetry

$33.00

Biographical Note: Maria Popova thinks and writes about our search for meaning--sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through the lens of wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian,...

paypalvisamasteramerican expressdiscoverdiners club
Description

Biographical Note:
Maria Popova thinks and writes about our search for meaning--sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through the lens of wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian, born in 2006 under the outgrown name Brain Pickings and included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials, author of Figuring and The Snail with the Right Heart, and maker of The Universe in Verse--a charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry.

Review Quotes:
"This book is a wonder. Science writing so often negates the inherent wonder of science, which comes so brilliantly alive here. Something bursts open in the mind. And let me say this: Maria Popova has the rare gift of starting a sentence and leaving you in trance by its end. I'd read anything she writes."-- Jad Abumrad, creator, Radiolab

Review Quotes:
A feast of stories, ideas, and beauty for the mind and heart.-- Kirkus

Review Quotes:
With creativity, verve, and intention, Popova, erudite and clarion, beautifully accomplishes her mission to inspire wonder.-- Booklist

Review Quotes:
A rigorous, interdisciplinary delight.-- Kara Lewis, Read Poetry

Review Quotes:
Like the phenomena described, this slender volume is a wonder.-- Publishers Weekly

Review Quotes:
Luminous ... The essays and poetry reflect and refract one another to create a dialogue--sometimes wildly abstract, sometimes quietly witty--that will shed new light on 'the beauty in reality laid bare.'"-- Shelf Awareness, starred review

Table of Contents:
Poetry, Science, and the Cosmos of the Possible

The Singularity and Our Elemental Belonging
Singularity (after Stephen Hawking) by Marie Howe

Flowers and the Birth of Ecology
Bloom by Emily Dickinson

Entropy and the Art of Alternative Endings
The More Loving One by W.H. Auden

Henrietta Leavitt, Edwin Hubble, and Our Hunger to Know the Universe
From My God, It's Full of Stars by Tracy K. Smith

Dark Matter and Our Yearning for Light
Let There Always Be Light by Rebecca Elson

Emily Noether, Symmetry, and the Hidden Order of Things
Figures of Thought by Howard Nemerov

Trees and the Optimism of Resilience
Optimism by Jane Hirshfield

Pi and the Seductions of Infinity
Pi by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

Euclid and the Dazzling Beauty of Universal Truth
Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Radioactivity and the Mystery of Matter
Power by Adrienne Rich

The Octopus and the Unknown
Impossible Blues by Maria Popova

This Mote of Matter
A Brave and Startling Truth by Maya Angelou

The Search for Life
We Are Listening by Diane Ackerman

Mushrooms and the Creative Spirit
Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath

Singularity Squared
Singularity (after Marie Howe) by Marissa Davis

Acknowledgments


Publisher Marketing:
In this book of illustrated essays, Maria Popova, creator of The Marginalian, presents a celebration of the human search for truth and beauty through the lenses of science and poetry.

"Poetry and science," as Popova writes in her introduction, "are instruments for knowing the world more intimately and loving it more deeply." In 15 short essays on subjects ranging from the mystery of dark matter and the infinity of pi to the resilience of trees and the intelligence of octopuses, Popova tells the stories of scientific searching and discovery. These stories are interwoven with details from the very real and human lives of scientists--many of them women, many underrecognized--and poets inspired by the same questions and the beauty they reveal. Each essay is paired with a poem reflecting its subject by poets ranging from Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Maya Angelou, Diane Ackerman, and Tracy K. Smith, and is stunningly illustrated by celebrated artist Ofra Amit. Together, they wake us to a "reality aglow with wonder."

Review Citations:

  • Kirkus Reviews 09/01/2024 (EAN 9781635868838, Hardcover)
  • Booklist 10/15/2024 pg. 9 (EAN 9781635868838, Hardcover)
  • Shelf Awareness 10/18/2024 (EAN 9781635868838, Hardcover)


Author: Popova, Maria
Publisher: Storey Publishing
Binding: Hardcover
Pub Date: 2024-10-01
BISAC: Science|Essays|Nature|Essays|Poetry|Subjects & Themes|Animals & Nature|Literary Criticism|Poetry
Subjects: Literature and science|Science|Essays|Poetry
Weight: 0.75 lbs
ISBN: 9781635868838
ASIN: -
SKU: SP-9781635868838