Transcript Strung Together

Strung Together
A collage poem constructed
from sampled bits of the
original poems published in
the new book Riffing on
Strings – Creative Writing
Inspired by String Theory,
published by Scriblerus
Press, 2008.
She couldn’t fall
asleep
had watched
a program on
PBS
about string
theories,
membranes,
parallel
universes,
gravity…
But maybe she just couldn’t knit.
Air is full of
mistaken
stars & the
wiggly halfzeroes
stripes
make when
folded into
fabric
and in no time
we started to unravel
we spent the oddest days
searching for our ends.
We were budding physicists;
we were burnouts
trying to get comfortable with mystery
To verify
the
absolute
minimum
something,
a shadow of
a spasming
string,
of what else
to call it but
god?
Frequencies
configuring
space and
time
numerating
our senses
our skins
our desires
Flat in singularity with our undone strings…
until we’re less than puff, slit by passing
planets into branes
Strongly tied
a galaxy held
equations knit
a symmetry of Nature
Matter and its opposite
hiccup
gulped in the big lipped, ink-black hole
under
swimming
the eleven
strings
of a space
they will
never
enter
through
eleven
curled
membranes
they can
never
imagine
But what is it? what noun placed next to what verb
modified by what adverb
holds the secret?
Dark matter evidently holds a key
to communicating across
dimensions
dimensions
beyond the
three
up and down
side to side
back and forth
Dimensions pulled like taffy strings
At least one of these
dimensions
blurs at the speed of
a plucked guitar
string,
becomes uniformly
invisible and
able to inhabit more
space than it ought
I am so tiny science has not figured out a way to define me
And
yet my
thread
is real?
How
am I
so
unreal
Begin with a line, remove the middle third.
Remove the middle third
of the segments.
Do it again and so on.
Only a dust of points remains
clutch quanta
catch thread
make bed of messy everything
but the numbers will tell
The physics of living
tangles the common
there is another
Universe
filled with old
rubber bands
Let me finger their eurhythmytic.
And you’ll see I’m self-thought
The
undulating
lines of
pure
thought
that
describe
the theory
of
everything
Broken
strings
littered the
floors of
physics
departments
everywhere
Rolled hems stiffening in the wind, strung out upon a sagging stretch of line
Only their orbital keeps them from falling into recurring dreams.
To this day there is still nothing to prove.
Many strings compared to one
when the universe shrinks into a dot
the string’s
end
has
frayed
into
ten strands,
which
themselves
can be
unwound
into
26.
String Theory posits
no events when it isn’t metaphor, donut twists
in matter – 10 to the minus 33 cm—
And in the
toy chest
of
infinities
both larger
and smaller
sets
can be
found
side by side
On the other hand, silly string may underpin much
of the universe
string that’s super symmetric particles
passing through your house and body
(I’m picking up super vibrations
from my GUT to my TOE)
A maddening locomotion
imperatives imbuing
shimmering
Angels
wracking their
branes to
tune the
superstrings
of their harp’s
fundamentals
remember that all motion is trying to be perfected, to be still
to
loop
and
loop
in
wavicles
of
joy
that
make
me
matter
How many possible routes, how many maps rolled into tubes,
tubes pulled taught into strings
folding into points?
Trying to calculate Horizon, the line strong
between water and night
the whirl of charmed quarks
Extra
dimensions,
parallel
universes,
the whole
over-loaded
wagon held
together
with tiny
bits of
string
those fickers which are returnally reprodictive of themselves
we can’t renounce the invisible,
the fluid foundation
of the solidly seen. We
can only imagine
and speak in
shrinking
untruths
the ordering will come
the tight weave will expose its structure
and dimensions will blink our eyes
Wobbly fibres coaxed from eternity
You were unraveled in childhood until you were everything.
Strung Together
Sampled contributors to this collage poem: Cecilia Vicuña and James
O’Hern, Colette Inez, Dave Morrison, Joseph Radke, Kathleen M.
Heideman, Bruce Holland Rogers, Michelle Morgan, Robert Borski,
Sandy Beck, Elaine Terranova, Diane Shipley DeCillis, Lauren
Gunderson, Cherryl E. Garner, Deborah P. Kolodji, Mary Margaret
Serpento, ushi, oino sakai, assu, and Lucinda Borkenhagen,
Michael Ricciardi, David Hurst, Brenda Hillman, Jeff P. Jones,
Heather Holliger, Linda Nemec Foster, Susan Zwinger, Wendy
Vardaman, Christine Klocek-Lim, Cleo Fellers Kocol, Beret SkorpenTifft. Also: James Joyce (Finnegans Wake)
Collaged poem & power point by M. Ricciardi
Riffing on Strings – Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory
was edited by Sean Miller and Shveta Verma, and published by
Scriblerus Press, 2008
•
Winner of an IPPY Silver Medal (Creative Non-fiction) 2008/9