Standard candles de Alice Major

Standard candles

Alice Major

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 21 iul 2015

Like the ever-widening universe, Standard candles expands on Alice Major’s earlier themes of family, mythology, and cosmology, teasing out subtle wonders in form and subject. Her voice resonates through experiments with old and new poetic forms as she imbues observed and imagined phenomena—from the centres of galaxies to the mysteries of her own backyard—with the most grounded and grounding moments of human experience. In Standard candles, readers will find an emotional dimension that seamlessly intersects with the dimensions of space and time. Fans of Alice Major will enjoy seeing her work through familiar themes, while readers new to her poetry will discover unexplored universes.Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter. She served as Edmonton’s first poet laureate and has been inducted into the city’s cultural hall of fame. A widely-published author, she has won many distinctions. Her most recent book is Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, which received the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction as well as a National Magazine Award gold medal. Her website is www.alicemajor.com.Let us compare cosmologiesThere is a beginning and a middle.There is an arc of narrative.There is a word, a large engraved initial.There is imperative—a cause, a god. Or not.There is an end. A purpose.Or maybe none. There is a plotwith reasons, reason. There is a circus,a theatre stage of space and time.There are equations at the bottomor the top. There is a pantheonof matter, motion, scattered photons.And the questions every universe expects:what came before? What happens next?

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"Alice Major’s 10th poetry collection, Standard candles, covers a huge distance in its slim text, racing through a dozen different poetic forms and countless cosmologies. It references everything from Greek mythology to quantum uncertainty to Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the inventor of the standard candle itself. The book is like an ultra-dense kernel containing all things—history, theology, astronomy, geometry, an infinite list. It’s the universe right before the Big Bang, titanic forces contained within a few thousand tightly packed words, almost ready to explode and race endlessly out." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1W6w7s5]
#6 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Nonfiction) for the week of November 06 2015.
#10 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list for the week of November 13, 2015.
"In her latest poetry collection, Standard candles, Alice Major continues to draw from science as a source of metaphor to ground the big ideas floating around the universe. Like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who bring scientific concepts to a public consciousness in their documentary television shows, Major takes up the poet's essential challenge to make grand concepts accessible and relatable to the reader. The result is a collection of thoughtfully crafted suites that feel mythological or biblical in scale, yet as familiar and common as our offices or kitchens.... In reading Standard candles, there is the potential for a most palpable experience of having one's mind blown. Readers will certainly find themselves putting the book down to stare out the window at the night sky and feel a sense of loneliness wrapped in communion." Prairie Books Now, Fall/Winter 2015
#9 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list for the week of January 16, 2016.
"In her poetry she uses her knowledge of specialised – even arcane – fields in the same way that British playwrights Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn have done: to provide startling and vivid analogies with the human dynamics of a complex emotional universe with which her readers will be more familiar. This is a handsomely produced and carefully organized book, divided into themed sections.... This substantial collection gives ample evidence of Major’s poetic craft and verbal dexterity.... [A] fine collection." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1PbKz4e]
"The result is a study of the universe, certainly, but also of childhood wonder, hardscrabble wisdom and inevitable grief... To Major, [standard candles] isn't just euphonious, it's a poignant metaphor for mortality, loss and the connectedness of all things."
"...one of Alice Major’s strengths is her ability to introduce an idea as sweeping as ‘science’ and distill it down to a moment, a memory, an object. No one but Major could have written this book: in a way no other poet consistently does, she grasps the edges of the universe and pulls it into a headlock. Her work has the precision of Leonard Cohen (whom she purposely invokes): a rare ability to condense the monumental into the quietly personal." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1Tg3uwA]
"[In Standard candles, Major] has everything that I most love, most want, in poetry: wit, startling originality, the power to move without a shred of sentimentality or manipulation – and perhaps most of all, the ability to take you somewhere new both intellectually and experientially.” [Full post at http://bit.ly/25SHtqn]
"In this book Major provides us with some STEAM, i.e., Science Technology Engineering Art Math! She uses geometry, math and theories as entry points into slices of domestic life. Her poems are precise in their diction, dense in their content, and technically proficient. The entire work is a dense and beautiful existential rumination. The comparisons and metaphors are fresh and unexpected."
"Standard candles is also a poetic inquiry of sorts – a skillful exploration of the overlap between poetry and science/mathematics. The poems range from abstract and philosophical to imagery-rich and personal. The book asks questions and puts forward theories that playfully push at the bounds of both science and poetry – for example, positing a pantheon of gods and goddesses in charge of various aspects of the universe and its creation. A high level of poetic skill informs this work, and the sections build upon one another to create a complex and varied collection."
"Standard candles works on so many levels. It demonstrates the capacity of poetry to make connections between subjects of varying complexities with very intentional word combinations, strong sounds, complete conceits, different forms and material grounded in the quotidian, scientific and mythical. Each chapter, with a consistent theme or question and built upon, has a strength that if extracted they could easily stand on their own like an individual collection. Throughout, the individual poems are exceptional, each feeling complete because of their spine or axis that the theme(s), conceits and word choices support."

Cuprins

xi Sonnet for Valentine’sThe set of all gods2 The god of prime numbers3 The god of infinities4 The god of symmetry5 The god of gravity6 The god of salt7 The god of kites and darts8 The god of quantum uncertainty9 The god of probabilities10 The baker god11 The god of automata12 The god of teapots14 The god of cats16 The god of sparrows17 The god of hearts18 The jeweller god19 The god of dark20 The god of memory21 The muse of universesOrdinary matter24 Ordinary matter26 Vacuum fluctuations27 The helium thoughts28 Advice to the lovelorn30 Three-body problem31 Love in three dimensions32 Heavy elements33 Local bubble34 CatechismStandard candles40 1 Address | 195942 2 Clouds of glory | 190845 3 Pythagorean theorem | 196546 4 Triangulation | 180849 5 The end of greatness | 200051 6 In the Castle of Stars | 157654 7 Supernova Type 1A | 199757 8 Then death returns59 9 In all that void60 10 Looking out to the dark | December 192862 11 d = (X- x)2 + (Y- y)2 + (Z- z)2 - c(T-t)2 | now64 A prayer to bring you homeMuscle of difficulty68 Muscle of difficulty70 Yet another crack in the foundation72 Day’s eye74 Expanding space76 The movers’ dilemma78 Rectangularization of the morbidity curve80 Now, that amphibious moment81 To the generations that will live a thousand years82 Last scattering surfaceLet us compare cosmologies86 1 Let us compare cosmologies87 2 The Orphic follower88 3 A pope89 4 The evangelist90 5 The philosophical skeptic91 6 The nihilist92 7 The totalitarian93 8 The survivalist94 9 The optimist95 10 The magician96 11 The baker97 12 The consumer98 13 The funeral director99 14 The Manichean100 15 The artistSins and virtues102 Avarice104 Lust105 Gluttony107 Envy108 Pride110 Anger111 Sloth113 Mercy115 HopeShifting wavelengths118 Tortoise and fern120 Fingers of God121 The barber’s paradox122 Zeno’s paradox123 Twin paradox124 Sand reckonings: Eubulides’ paradox125 Honeycomb conjectures127 Bee violet128 Optical molasses129 Life adapts to inhospitable environments130 How to tell a Martian my heart is on the leftUnderworlds132 Persephone and I are underground135 The outer dark138 Cocytus142 Niflheim145 The man with no hands147 Each of us the centre of a circlePostscript150 God submits a grant application to the Canada Council153 Notes163 Acknowledgements

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