The Multiverse

Andrew Wynn Owen

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781784105624
• eBook ISBN: 9781784105631
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

The Multiverse, Andrew Wynn Owen's first book of poems, sings of science, philosophy, and religion, testing the emotional valences of each. It sings in a variety of strictly observed metres and with rhyme. The poems find their way into memory as sense and sound. The Multiverse celebrates human curiosity. The poet is an enthusiast—for the visible world, for scientific and philosophical excursions.

Reveries

‘Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.’

W. B. Yeats, ‘To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing’

i. On Beauty

Some days, out in a field, it hits my mind

Like wind wings up a bird.

Chiming with nature, fervours find

Release. It has conferred

Eye-rhapsody, neck-shivers, fear-and-trembling

As though the stable cosmos blurred

And burst with smudgy unity, resembling

The better hits

Of Turner, all assembling

Around a blitz

Of tireless light, which cannot die

But simply splits

And sprawls. The well is deep. It will not dry.

ii. A Soulful Choice

Let’s say there’s evidence that ‘souls’ exist.

What’s more, they transmigrate

Eternally, but will desist

And die if in a state

Of frozenness for more than half an hour.

Meanwhile, you’re plague-wracked. Grim, the great

Physicians tending you present a sour

And strange decision:

Be frozen while they scour

Every division

Of human knowledge for a cure;

Or make provision

For bodily death, assured your soul’s secure.

What’s more, before you choose, consider this:

It’s thought the soul may be

Some influence (it’s hit-and-miss,

Soul-theory, currently)

On character – but minimal, much less

Than fallouts that we’ve learned to see

From genes and nurture. Asked to second-guess

A person’s actions,

Most scientists profess

That soul-subtraction’s

Quite trivial. So it’s up to you:

Call souls ‘distractions’

And freeze, or trust in what you can’t construe.

iii. Laughter

‘Aha-haha-haha-haha-hahah –’

Today I feel so free.

There’s no disaster could disbar

The pointblank euphany

And dizzy fanfare of this boundless sky,

Whose indecipherability

Has set me reeling, rolling. ‘Who am I?’

‘What is a mind?’

One day (the day I die)

I guess I’ll find

No more to laugh at, yet this sound

Of laughter, blind

And blissful and unselfing, will resound.

iv. The Hopes of a Naturalist

It’s when I stumble from the usual track

And catch the light just so,

Rebounding, quick and dauntless, back

Off water – then I know,

Staggered again, the feel of good, and smile

At glimmering gusts, the things that grow

Exuberant in their being all the while,

As I in mine,

Observing clouds compile

Columns of fine

Prismatic mist. Wish-clarity

Sizzles: a line

Of linkage, nature’s, warms the heart of me.

v. Joy

Stark jumping jacks of sunlight and suspension,

Updrafting dust, conspire

To spin my spaced-out...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• The Multiverse
• Taliesin
• The Door
• What Matters
• Leaf Lives
• The Rowboat
• Thoughts in Sunshine
• Stonehenge
• Imprints
• April Shower
• The Pristine and the Torn
• The Alchemist
• A Sign at CERN
• The Fountain
• Shadowings
• Mutabilities
• The Puppet
• The Roman Architectural Revolution
• The Crucified
• For Neil Harbisson
• For Moon Ribas
• Here and There
• What Is
• Spies
• Rain or Shine
• Epistemic Communities
• Ramblers
• The Ladder
• The Borderline
• How and Why
• The Traces
• The Quantum Mechanic
• Ants, Spiders, Bees
• The Waterfall
• Good and Bad
• City Thoughts
• Entropy
• The Birth of Speech
• Sand Grains
• Calm
• A Paean for Medical Science
• Today and Tomorrow
• The Garden
• Promise and Compromise
• Mirrors and Windows
• The Chair
• The Green, The Grey, The Gold
• The Shoal
• The Fisherman
• The Slow Steal
• The Painter’s Honeymoon
• Convenience and Inconvenience
• Mars
• The Scientist
• The Centrifuge
• Observances
• Reveries
• Detectives
• The Kite
• Till Next Time
• About the Author
• Copyright