Category: writing

Reactions, reflections, equations;
Post marks an auspicious occasion
With sestercentennial
From practice perennial 
Achieved in the latest summation.  

This is a non-Twitter/Bluesky poem, newly written this month, in honor of the fact that this is my 250th post on this site!  Since this is also the spring break week of the semester, it seemed like a good point to pause and celebrate.       

Reactions, reflections, equations…

Chemical reactions, reflections on teaching, and mathematical equations have all been centered in these various poems and “translations,” over the past few years.    

Post marks an auspicious occasion…

With my typical limit of 280 words per poem translation, 250 posts at that average word count would be 70,000 words, which a Google estimate places at 280 pages: tough to believe.  This website has been a welcome addition to my academic routine since late January 2020, so I’ve likewise passed my fifth anniversary of writing here, relatively recently.    

With sestercentennial /
From practice perennial… 

The overall project technically began in the previous spring, in April 2019, with its overlap of National Poetry Writing Month and the International Year of the Periodic Table.  The latter designation had arisen because it was the 150th year since Dmitri Mendeleev’s publication of his precursor to the modern Periodic Table of the Elements (PTE).  That occasion was where I learned the term “sesquicentennial” (for 150 years, since Mendeleev’s PTE was developed in 1869); I similarly learned “sestercentennial” this week in thinking through potential vocabulary for this post.  (I am not sure the term is as accurately deployed in a numbering scheme for 250, but its metric fit was not to be denied.)      

Achieved in the latest summation.  

This latest essay marks my 250th post.  “Occasional poetry” seemed a good title here, since it technically refers to poems written for a special occasion.  I’ve also liked it as a descriptor of my writing routine since beginning my posts several years ago.  That routine still involves much standard academic prose– lecture notes, grant proposals, journal articles, countless emails– but also now, occasionally, poetry.    

‘Tis two days after Christmas; in drafting this post, 
I’m hearing a meter that’s cited the most 
With poems familiar, in terms of the Yuletide. 
Apply it to films, now, with bit of break school-wide.

The McCallister family: flying to France!  
Leave the house undefended?  There’s nary a chance, 
Since Kevin will battle with Marv and with Harry, 
‘Till Kate finds return trip with polka band merry. 

Next, the otter-led epic on shore of the stream, 
As Emmet and Ma pursue musical dreams… 
A seeming-lost contest yields shared melody: 
“The Gift of the Magi,” when river meets sea. 

Last, a marathon viewing each 12/25, 
Where Ralphie’s narration will keep hope alive 
For the Red Ryder gift with this thing which tells time: 
Another Yule saga, condensed into rhyme.  

A pleasant diversion of holiday means; 
Anapestic tetrameter framing the scenes; 
A trio of stories in metric compliance. 
Happy New Year to all!  And now back to verse-science.

***

Heading through the Twelve Days of Christmas, I enjoyed putting this longer poem together, as an homage to some of the holiday movies I know well, using the familiar cadence of both Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”  

‘Tis two days after Christmas; in drafting this post, /
I’m hearing a meter that’s cited the most /
With poems familiar, in terms of the Yuletide. /
Apply it to films, now, with bit of break school-wide.

As noted above, it is a rewarding challenge to match the meter of two of the most familiar and beloved poems from this season, and the longer days of the winter break help make it feasible.  

The McCallister family: flying to France!  /
Leave the house undefended?  There’s nary a chance, /
Since Kevin will battle with Marv and with Harry, /
‘Till Kate finds return trip with polka band merry. 

The first summary is that of Home Alone.  Protagonist Kevin McCallister defends his family home from two hapless burglars, Harry and Marv, when he is accidentally left behind from a family vacation to Paris. 

Interspersed with the scenes of Kevin’s adventures is the tale of Kevin’s mother, Kate, braving several airport misadventures as she travels back home to Kevin.  She finds a ride with a polka band for the last stretch of her odyssey, home to Chicago (by way of Scranton).    

Next, the otter-led epic on shore of the stream, /
As Emmet and Ma pursue musical dreams…  /
A seeming-lost contest yields shared melody: /
“The Gift of the Magi,” when river meets sea. 

The second commemorates a favorite special from the Muppets: “Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.”  Emmet and Ma Otter celebrate the holiday season while remembering Emmet’s dad, Pa Otter.  They each aspire to find a way to give the other a musical instrument, aiming to win a contest with a monetary prize.

The plot ultimately gives rise to its own moving twist on O. Henry’s beautiful “The Gift of the Magi,” closing with the song “When the River Meets the Sea,” written by Paul Williams.  

Last, a marathon viewing each 12/25, /
Where Ralphie’s narration will keep hope alive / 
For the Red Ryder gift with this thing which tells time: /
Another Yule saga, condensed into rhyme.  

And the last celebrates another well-known movie, A Christmas Story.  It is based on author Jean Shepherd’s book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, and Shepherd provides the narration in the voice of protagonist Ralphie, remembering his childhood. 

Since the movie airs on a 24-hour loop each December 25, its lines have long been familiar ones; one of my favorite scenes sees Ralphie wax eloquent in an essay for school about the Red Ryder BB gun he desperately wants for Christmas, hailing its “compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.”    

A pleasant diversion of holiday means; /
Anapestic tetrameter framing the scenes; / 
A trio of stories in metric compliance. /
Happy New Year to all!  And now back to verse-science.

Anapestic tetrameter is the meter used in the poems by Clement C. Moore and Dr. Seuss, and the name of the meter embodies it (an-a-PEST-ic te-TRA-me-ter), which lets me cite it directly in the closing lines.  I find it very fun, each holiday season, to see the many tributes to this memorable form, “in metric compliance.”  This effort in “framing the scenes” (i.e., the “moving images” of the post’s title) has likewise been a good way to spend some time during the slightly slower season of the winter break.

The New Year will bring both the spring semester and, in these posts, a more formal return to chemistry-themed poetry!

Illumine anew, auld lang syne-ing…
The candles and lights realigning;
A beam’s lifelong essence
(Far past phosphorescence):
A window through winter still shining.

This is a rare winter-break post, given a theme that has generally been on my mind as we (here in the Northern Hemisphere) progress toward our longest nights this weekend.  It is a new poem, and it’s not one that would fit neatly into a NaPoWriMo routine, but it does align with some of the concepts discussed here.  I’ll use more space than my typical 280 words in expanding it, as it uses more poetic license than is typical.       

“Illumine anew, auld lang syne-ing…  /
The candles and lights realigning.“

As we approach the holiday season and the start of a new calendar year, it’s inevitable to dwell in memory at times… to be “auld lang syne-ing,” to adapt a familiar phrase. 

My family celebrates Christmas, with many traditions centered around candles, lights, and music.  Moreover, having grown up in a parsonage, I remember well how these seasonal traditions fell into the precisely defined details of the liturgical calendar, during my childhood.  The third Sunday of Advent was marked on the Advent wreath by a pink candle, rather than purple, designating it as Gaudete Sunday.  Christmas Eve briefly brought a beautiful luminaria display: spanning the sidewalks approaching the church, promptly removed by the end of the evening.  Our tree and home decorations came down on New Year’s Day, as Epiphany loomed and would mark the start of a stretch of Ordinary Time (not to mention the concurrent return of school-day routines and peak punctuality). 

Reflecting on these traditions (in other words, “realigning” these sources of illumination) gave rise to a tangential memory, but a welcome one, this week.    

“A beam’s lifelong essence /
(Far past phosphorescence)…“

Different chemical processes involving light can happen on different timescales.  When a molecule absorbs light, it is energetically excited and can take many pathways due to this extra energy.  Two of these pathways involve radiative decay: the excited molecule returns to its ground state by emitting light.  

Two possibilities for this path are called fluorescence and phosphorescence.  Of the two, phosphorescence has a much longer timescale (typically on the order of thousandths of seconds); it occurs much more slowly than fluorescence (typically on the order of millionths of seconds), due to the specific electronic behavior involved. Photochemical lifetime is a term that quantifies how long a molecule exists in the excited state: essentially, how long its glow can be observed.  Both processes described above are quite fleeting, in terms of an everyday frame of reference, but phosphorescence has a lifetime that is thousands of times longer than that of fluorescence. 

The light-related memory that came to mind this week was from years past, so the lifetime in question was far, far longer (to a comical extent) than even that of the relatively slow process of phosphorescence. 

“A window through winter still shining.“

By the time I reached middle and high school, we lived in a relatively rural area, and so my bus ride on winter mornings was particularly dark.  I remember mentioning once to Mom how much it helped break up the monotony of the ride (and thus alleviate my worry about the upcoming school day), starting back into the January routine, to still see occasional Christmas lights still scattered along the route. 

Our own outdoor lights were relatively simple, lining a window facing the busiest road through town, which happened to be a fixture of the bus route.  I noticed in every subsequent winter after that conversation that the lights stayed up well into the New Year: long, long past the formal start of Ordinary Time.       

Years have gone by since Mom’s passing; many more, since the bus rides.  However, the metaphorical lifetime of that window in winter persists: hundreds of millions of seconds, now; still counting; still shining.   

“Picture-book classic:
Consider the terrapin,
Facing the day 
With defense first miscued;
Learning to balance 
A shell-set employment
With needed steps…
As a wise turtle would do.”

The 12 April 2024 Twitter poem highlighted Turtle Tale, a memorable storybook written by Frank Asch.  This was the last of three story-summarizing poems written during National Library Week 2024.  (In terms of the post title here, the rhyme with “hurtle forward” was both humorous and intriguingly contradictory.)  

“Picture-book classic: /
Consider the terrapin…”

Unlike the novels celebrated earlier here, Turtle Tale is a picture book, highlighting simple images of a “terrapin” learning to navigate the world.  (Author Frank Asch also composed and illustrated many other classics during his career.)  

“Facing the day /
With defense first miscued; /
Learning to balance /
A shell-set employment /
With needed steps…”

In this story, the eponymous Turtle learns when best to use his shell, facing the various hazards of the day.  

Initially, a falling apple strikes him on the head, so he decides to always hide in his shell.  However, he then realizes he cannot eat or drink (his “defense [is] first miscued”), so he fully reverses his resolve.  The storyline continues through a few more “all or nothing” moments, until Turtle strategically deploys his “shell-set employment” at a key moment: hiding from a hungry fox, then re-emerging to face the day, once the danger is past.  

Achieving the balance between stationary, defensive stance and “needed steps” brings Turtle’s story to a satisfying close.  

“As a wise turtle would do.”

Turtle’s refrain as he strives for this happy medium is: “That’s what a wise turtle would do.”  He first applies this characterization to the two extremes (always using the shell; never using the shell) before realizing the wisdom of moderation, at which point the line– now deployed more aptly– closes the book. 

During my childhood, this was one of my and my siblings’ favorite stories, and the status of “wise turtle” became a shorthand for achieving a sensible response to an everyday challenge.  It has been fun to revisit the book, years later, in this setting.  

“The week underway: celebrating
Books, libraries, tomes; elevating 
The frigates poetic.  
Next few posts’ aesthetic:
Some classics, verse-commemorating.”

The 10 April 2024 Twitter limerick began a new set of themed posts, as the week of the total solar eclipse was also National Library Week 2024!  This first poem simply introduced the week-in-progress, while each of the next three posts summarized a specific story.  

“The week underway: celebrating /
Books, libraries, tomes…”

The first two lines of the limerick shifted focus to National Library Week and noted that it was already underway.  The motto for this year’s event was “Ready, Set, Library.”  

“[E]levating / The frigates poetic…”

The third line referenced Emily Dickinson’s much more memorable celebration of the “books, libraries, tomes” alluded to previously: “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away.”  (I am sure I am one of many who encountered that particular term for the first time in her poem, reinforcing her verse’s overall theme.)  

This in turn reminded me of one of the previous spring’s posts, which had highlighted a comparable quote by Anna Quindlen: “Books are the plan, and the train, and the road.  They are the destination, and the journey.  They are home.”  

“Next few posts’ aesthetic: /
Some classics, verse-commemorating.”

“Pro-book” is not a particularly surprising or novel (ha) stance to take, but I will always welcome the opportunity to deliberately revisit some favorite stories in this space, and the subsequent three Twitter poems were fun to write.  I similarly look forward to writing in more detail about them here, this month.  

The last two lines set up the goals for the rest of the week, in which the poems would aim to “verse-commemorate” some of my favorite classic books from years past.  

In the midst of autumn hectic,
I am pondering eclectic
(With most lines acatalectic)
For October-posting goal. 
In the meetings by the dozens
Re: the calendar discussions,
Hear the essay repercussions 
Where extent exerts control:
Whence the structure, on the whole? 

This is a non-Twitter poem for which the general theme has been running through my mind since the late summer.  It uses the structure of a stanza of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” which the author contextualizes from start to finish in his absorbing essay entitled “The Philosophy of Composition.”  

For my part, this homage comments on some of the discussions I’ve heard in academic meetings in the past few months.  Since the poem didn’t have the Twitter constraint of 280 characters, I’ll give myself some more flexibility, with a 560-word limit, starting here.   

In the midst of autumn hectic, /
I am pondering eclectic /
(With most lines acatalectic.) /
For October-posting goal….

This essay will “ponder… [the] eclectic” more than typical chem-specific posts here do. The “lines acatalectic” seem particularly suited for this specific “October-posting goal”: few poems have as distinctive a syllabic rhyme scheme as Poe’s “The Raven.”  It is a fun challenge to match the structure.  

In the meetings by the dozens /
Re: the calendar discussions, /
Hear the essay repercussions /
Where extent exerts control…

Several of this semester’s committee meetings (but not, in all prosaic fairness, anywhere near dozens of them!) have involved discussions about future years’ academic calendars.

What I found initially counter-intuitive, but quickly convincing, is that the first step must be the choice regarding the actual calendar adjustment, before the substance of what that adjustment entails can be thoroughly discussed.  This is because many long-term, high-stakes campus plans— class modules, athletic teams’ schedules— hinge on what the calendar looks like in the first place.  The timescale for changing the calendar (years in advance) is longer than the timescale for using it (months or weeks in advance).  

When the pertinent conversations began, they thus suggested “essay repercussions,” as I was reminded of “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which Edgar Allan Poe recounts his writing process for “The Raven.”  His essay highlights some similarly unexpected points.  

For instance, rather than the metric feet used, or the scene depicted, or the voice of the narrator– all of which are quite famous– the fundamental requirement that Poe discusses is simply the poem’s length: “The initial consideration was that of extent.”  He comments that the poem should be read all at once to achieve maximum effect: “If two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed.”  Soon after follow similarly broad discussions of effect (“beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem”) and tone (“one of sadness”).  

It is only after those three big-picture choices that Poe addresses what I would’ve initially thought to be more vivid inspirations: the raven itself, the bird’s “Nevermore” refrain, and the story of the narrator and Lenore.  And likewise, it is only after THAT discussion that Poe notes that he “may as well say a few words of the versification.”  The logistics of the intricate rhymes, employing trochaic feet in a primarily (but not entirely) “octametre acatalectic” scheme, are presented almost as an afterthought. 

When I first encountered this essay, I was surprised to learn that the dramatic saga of the “midnight dreary” finds its primary origin in a line-count requirement.  

Whence the structure, on the whole? 

In terms of this post, I’ll keep my focus on the comparison between poem and calendar.  It is interesting to see how “extent exerts control” in both literary work and academic planning, as the defining first principle.  The overall shapes of both works under consideration (“the structure[s], on the whole”) rely on eminently practical starting points.  

More broadly, it is fascinating to revisit such a generously retrosynthetic analysis of a poem.  Doing so evokes some chemistry themes generally: the creative process versus the final work, the varied ways in which “micro” elements combine to yield “macro” effects, and other themes I’ve enjoyed exploring in this space.  I expect I will return to Poe’s essay in the future. 

I was fortunate enough to be in the path of totality for Monday’s solar eclipse, and so I’m changing my typical routine a bit here, to write about that experience.    

As might be expected for the confluence of a total solar eclipse and National Poetry Writing Month, I also have written multiple Twitter poems celebrating the event!  I’ll be glad to revisit the experience next spring in “translating” those, but I’d also like to write more spontaneously for once. I’ll skip to the prose, since the eclipse itself provided ample poetry. 

(In terms of structure, without the constraints typically imposed on these posts by the Twitter limericks, I’ll simply give myself an hour and be quite aware of my lack of content-area knowledge, which should keep the word count manageable.)  

***

I asked my students this semester to write briefly about two things in reflecting on the eclipse: what observation(s) most surprised them and what connection(s) they could make to other courses or experiences.  I suppose that, to be fair, I should do the same.  

Rather than pick out one specific observation, I’ll describe my own day.  The morning was that of a typical Monday; I went to campus to teach, although there was a definite mood of excitement as everyone discussed where they were going in the afternoon.  Home was nearer the center of the eclipse path than work was, and so I drove home to see a few extra seconds of totality, grabbing my eclipse glasses and a folding chair, finding others gathered around my apartment complex’s gazebo as we turned our sights to the afternoon sky. 

I personally found the drop in temperature to be the most striking phenomenon, as totality approached.  It had been an exceedingly warm day for early April, and the new chill in the air was palpable. The sense of “immediate” twilight was also notable; automatic lights started turning on everywhere as we passed 3:10 p.m.  Totality itself was astounding; I have read and viewed excellent resources in many settings, but they could not compare to actually seeing the corona, the diamond-ring effects, the sudden daytime emergence of Venus (faintly visible to the bottom right of the sun, in the top third of my photo posted here).    

Where I live, totality was brief– around a minute or so.  I was envious of those who could travel closer to the center of the path but simultaneously grateful for each second I’d been able to see.  Very quickly, enough of the sun was visible again that it seemed like a typical afternoon, though I stayed outside watching (with appropriate eyewear!) through the remainder of the eclipse.  In this fifth consecutive spring semester of urgent routine, it was a welcome gift to have an occasion that could not be shifted to asynchronous or online, to which attention had to be paid at the moment.                  

In terms of connections I can make, those have been increasing all week.  I had primarily been thinking of the partial eclipses I’d experienced in 1994 and 2017, before and during the event on Monday.  I have strong memories of watching the effects of the light in a shoebox pinhole projector during a day in middle school, of hearing reports from those who traveled a few states south to totality from campus in 2017. 

What was fascinating as the day went on was that images of a long, long-past (1980s-era) picture book of the sun began to arise; this was where I’d first seen photographs of a solar flare. As an early reader, I had been appalled and nervous to see this odd, almost-animal-like shape lurching off the surface of the sun (my kindergarten-era thinking had been resolute: “It’s supposed to be a circle!  With lines coming out of it!”).  Searching to identify the specific book was a lost cause, given how prevalent “the sun” is in titles across disciplines and decades, but the photo available at this encyclopedia entry seems to be about what I remember.  I found it somewhat appropriate that the memory re-emerged as time passed, given the theme of the day, and fun to reflect on how my own path through STEM data and literature had progressed from those early days.   

I’ve also greatly appreciated the way family, friends, and people far and wide shared photos and impressions across text chains, social media, and newspaper accounts.  Excitement around a science-themed event is always wonderful to see. I found one story in The Washington Post particularly moving: a then-first-year science teacher had shared with his class in 1978 (the last time their location had been in totality) that they should all meet up again in 2024, when they could see a total solar eclipse again, looking at that then-far-off date on the calendar.  On Monday, they did.  

As I careen towards an hour in this decidedly draft-y writing, I am thus reminded again of the interlocking rubaiyat: how its poetic structure (AABA, BBCB, CCDC, etc.) flings a grappling hook of rhyme and structure forward into the next stanza, giving the writer at least a hint of where to start, making sure the poem continues on.  Similarly, a day like Monday invites us to think deliberately across decades, rather than days, inspiring reflections on the past and hopes for the future.

Eclipses themselves are, of course, incredibly concrete and precise in their definitions and predictions; countless maps and records can show us already where and when the next several solar eclipses will be.  However, the facts that they will demand attention and that we can choose the form of that attention when the junctures arise: those are both points that will endure.