The Multiverse

Andrew Wynn Owen

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781784105631
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: 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