“A narrative’s long-lived themes, holding;
An interest in STEM concepts, molding:
A landmark of fiction
Defies circumscription
With wrinkle in time still unfolding.”
The 25 April 2023 limerick commemorated one of my favorite books, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Like the previous poem, it was posted during National Library Week 2023.
“A narrative’s long-lived themes, holding; /
An interest in STEM concepts, molding…”
A Wrinkle in Time is the book I’ve probably read the most over my lifetime. I’ve encountered it multiple times in both classroom assignments and leisure reading, always engrossed by its blend of literature, science, and philosophy, along with its compelling narrative (to which the word constraints of this post cannot do justice!).
I’ve written before in this site about its focus on poetic structure, in particular, and the echoes of those ideas in my own writing routines. Reading the book for the first time in elementary school was the first time I’d encountered the scientific terms and concepts shared in its pages, some of which have echoed through the decades since.
The book both “[holds] long-lived themes” and has, for me, “[molded] an interest in STEM concepts.”
“A landmark of fiction /
Defies circumscription /
With wrinkle in time still unfolding.”
The book is beloved by a wide audience; it won the Newbery Medal in 1963 and is constantly held up as a “landmark of fiction.” The novel defies neat categorization: it has elements of science fiction and fantasy, but its resonance crosses many disciplinary lines.
In an interview with Horn Book twenty years after A Wrinkle in Time’s publication, L’Engle famously said: “I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.” This balance between inspired breakthrough and retroactive recognition has likewise stayed with me, as an illustration of the creative process.
Chemphasis 