The Great Chain of Being — A Poem in Progress

June 27th, 2008 Posted in Of Interest

Perhaps it’s crass to write a poem out in the open and explain it as I go. But that’s what I’m going to do. Theme: The Great Chain of Being.

Nothing is invisible –
We have our ways of casing the world:
Tripods squat upon their earth,
Antennae grow in thickets,
Satellites collect signs of universal dust
From glowing distant cartwheel hubs
Packed with spaces only light can cross
To inflame the axons of its curious generations

Some Notes: “Nothing is invisible” is the first thing that occurred to me — I started thinking about scientific instruments; I use “casing” instead of “seeing” because of the connotation of enclosure; tripods — a familiar scientific cliche — telescopes, Bunsen burners, etc. — and then I wanted to talk about he dominance of this. So it’s “their earth,” and I was thinking about H.G. Well’s Martians with their tripod legs; and then traditionally “earth” almost as low as you can get on the chain (dirt being the lowest). “Signs of the universal dust” — everything may be visible, but gamma rays are essentially invisible except by inference from readings on instruments; “Packed with spaces” — the dual sense of density and emptiness in galaxies; “light … To inflame the axons of its curious generations”: I’m thinking of the role of light (from the sun) in creating life: curious both in the sense of strange, at beginning of the evolutionary tree, and in the sense that it ultimately leads to human curiosity, with the image of electromagnetic radiation continuing in electrical transmission through the axons of the brain — “inflaming” them and ultimately the curiosity that is reflexively directed at light (as both superstition and science).

The really interesting link in the Great Chain occurs between the inanimate and the animate. So I’m looking for things at the beginning of the chain and its relationship to what’s higher: post-enlightenment, not just minerals, soil, and dirt, but sub-atomic particles, electromagnetic radiation, and so on.

On to virusus, cells, and micro-organisms … because of scientific advances, a poem about the Great Chain has far more material available to it today than in Pope’s time. Some of the traditional themes I’ll also be thinking about: plenitude, continuity, gradation; other-wordly fecundity that ultimately produces an intelligence that turns its attention back at its source; the necessary fulfillment of all possibilities; the heirarchy of the chain and its political implications; mind and body; life of the mind vs. life of action; scientific hubris; more contemporary themes — DNA, mutation, natural selection (as correlates to chance and fate), technology ….