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.)
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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.
Chemphasis 
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