The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2011

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Cosmological Physics

One of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the universe’s origin through the Big Bang is the cosmic microwave background. This is essentially an echo made up of radiation that is scattered across the entire universe. Scientists are able to detect this radiation by using specialized equipment to analyze microwave radiation. Through these studies, scientists have been able to learn about the first moments of the universe because the cosmic microwave background is a remnant from that time. While the study of this picture of the early universe involved a progression of experiments, the actual discovery of the cosmic microwave background happened by accident by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965.

Since the 1960s, human understanding of the universe has expanded. The development of space travel in the 1960s and beyond has led to countless discoveries, images, and sounds from different parts of the solar system and greater universe.

Space nicely lends itself to poetry. Space is full of mystery: It is vast and endless, full of almost mythical structures and bodies, and it has inspired people since the beginning of human history. Smith’s focus on the sounds of space, though, is unique because most writers tend to focus on the imagery of space. However, Smith’s connection of the universe to more human concerns like curiosity, wonder, death, purpose, and perspective are thematic tropes which have existed in many cultures throughout most of recorded history.

A 21st Century Poem

Smith’s poem is very much a product of the modern era within which it exists. While poets and writers have been looking to the stars for millennia, older writers would often connect the unknown universe to mysterious forces like gods and other mythological beings. The names of the planets and the constellations are the work of artists and mystics who, for centuries, came up with literary explanations for that which they couldn’t explain.

Smith has both the advantage and disadvantage of writing in an age where humans have used science to solve some of the mysteries of space. The advantage of this for a poet is that science provides a much deeper understanding of the universe and humanity’s place in it. Through science, writers now have access to a fascinating vocabulary of exotic sounding principles, and writers have the capacity to imagine things like black holes and quasars of which the ancients couldn’t even dream.

But the downside of this understanding is a lot of the mystery has been eradicated. While there are still so many things to learn, science provides a cold rationality to the mysteries of the heavens. Now, instead of thinking of a cluster of stars like the Pleiades as sisters fleeing a lustful huntsman, it is understood that cluster is just a bunch of gaseous balls of light like all the other stars in the universe.

How a poet reconciles the mystery and the scientific understanding of the cosmos can determine their ability to effectively use space to invoke emotion and wonder in a reader. Smith does so with aplomb.