By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)
The Universe in Verse — the annual celebration of science through poetry I host at Pioneer Works — returns with a very special edition: This year’s show, benefiting Pioneer Works’ endeavor to build New York’s first-ever public observatory, celebrates the 100th anniversary of Sir Arthur Eddington’s historic eclipse expedition to Africa, which confirmed relativity and catapulted Einstein into celebrity. “Dear Mother, joyous news today,” Einstein wrote upon receiving word of the results, which revolutionized our understanding of the universe and shaped the course of modern physics. The scientific triumph was also a heartening, humane moment — just after the close of World War I, a pacifist English Quaker, who had refused to be drafted in the war at the risk of being jailed for treason, and a German Jew united humanity under the same sky, under the deepest truths of the universe. An invitation to perspective in the largest sense.Join us for an evening of poems and stories about eclipses, relativity, spacetime, and Einstein’s legacy, featuring readings by musicians David Byrne, Regina Spektor, Amanda Palmer, Emily Wells, and Josh Groban, astrophysicists Janna Levin and Natalie Batalha, poets Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson, actor Natascha McElhone, theoretical cosmologist and jazz saxophonist Stephon Alexander, comedian Chuck Nice, choreographer Bill T. Jones, On Being host Krista Tippett, and the inimitable Neil Gaiman reading an original poem generously composed for the occasion.Find the complete show and the full poem playlist below:
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman and poem #1397 by Emily Dickinson, read by Janna Levin
“Education” by Elizabeth Alexander, read by the poet herself
“Hubble Photographs: After Sappho” by Adrienne Rich, read by Amanda Palmer
“Theories of Everything” by Rebecca Elson, read by Regina Spektor
“A Solar Eclipse” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, read by Natascha McElhone
Musical interlude: Amanda Palmer
“As If to Demonstrate an Eclipse” by Billy Collins, read by Chuck Nice
“Achieving Perspective” by Pattiann Rogers, read by David Byrne
“The Shampoo” by Elizabeth Bishop, read by me
Musical interlude: Regina Spektor
“Research” by Cecilia Payne, read by Natalie Batalha
“Faster Than Light” by Marilyn Nelson, read by the poet herself
“Explaining Relativity” by Rebecca Elson, read by Stephon Alexander
“Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be” by Ross Gay, read by Bill T. Jones
“After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics” by W.H. Auden, read by Josh Groban
“Figures of Thought” by Howard Nemerov, read by Krista Tippett
“In Transit” by Neil Gaiman, read by Neil Gaiman
“Einstein’s Daughter” by Jennifer Clement, read by Emily Wells
Musical finale: Emily Wells