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Physics Envy: American Poetry and Science in the Cold War and After
At the close of the Second World War, modernist poets found themselves in an increasingly scientific world, where natural and social sciences claimed exclusive rights to knowledge of both matter and mind. Following the overthrow of the Newtonian worldview and the recent, shocking displays of the power of the atom, physics led the way, with other disciplines often turning to the methods and discoveries of physics for inspiration.
In Physics Envy , Peter Middleton examines the influence of science, particularly physics, on American poetry since World War II. He focuses on such diverse poets as Charles Olson, Muriel Rukeyser, Amiri Baraka, and Rae Armantrout, among others, revealing how the methods and language of contemporary natural and social sciences—and even the discourse of the leading popular science magazine Scientific American —shaped their work. The relationship, at times, extended in the other direction as leading physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger were interested in whether poetry might help them explain the strangeness of the new, quantum world. Physics Envy is a history of science and poetry that shows how ultimately each serves to illuminate the other in its quest for the true nature of things.
In Physics Envy , Peter Middleton examines the influence of science, particularly physics, on American poetry since World War II. He focuses on such diverse poets as Charles Olson, Muriel Rukeyser, Amiri Baraka, and Rae Armantrout, among others, revealing how the methods and language of contemporary natural and social sciences—and even the discourse of the leading popular science magazine Scientific American —shaped their work. The relationship, at times, extended in the other direction as leading physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger were interested in whether poetry might help them explain the strangeness of the new, quantum world. Physics Envy is a history of science and poetry that shows how ultimately each serves to illuminate the other in its quest for the true nature of things.
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
272 pages, Hardcover
First published October 22, 2015
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January 24, 2016
Insightful and dense. It's faults are not its own: they are mine. I wanted it to be more than it was.
Middleton is intrigued--fascinated, obsessed in the way of a practicing poet--by the relationship between science (particularly nuclear physics) and poets in mid-Century America. What happens when scientists arrogate to themselves all of the natural and social worlds? What do poets do?
He worries this problem in a series of chapters that are--by his own admission--more like interrelated essays, coming back, again and again, to the same poets and their same works, finding something new in them again and again, something more to say. His touchstones are Charles Olson and Muriel Rukeyser, especially, then Robert Duncan. (Appended to these central figures are extended analyses of Rae Armantrout, Jackson Mac Low, George Oppen, and Amiri Baraka.)
The book starts with something of a head-fake, physicists dismissing poetry out of hand as old-fashioned and obscurantist, self-confident in their knowledge of the universe, which sets up Middleton's question. In the next two chapters, though, he immediately qualifies this ideal-type, showing, inter alia, that scientists were not quite so sure in their own knowledge, nor so dismissive of poetry: indeed, they could refer to poetry in their own works as placeholder for ideas that were too abstract to express in language. (Which itself was an admission of their own fallibility.)
Middleton sees the poetic response to science evolving out of the work of Ezra Pound, who challenged poets to be more scientific, even as his own knowledge of science, on the evidence of his poetry, was relatively scant. Rather, he wrestled with a similar problematic: how to guarantee that the knowledge generated in his massive "Cantos," which ranged across a multitude of topics, was authentic. One way was to have it legitimized by a person of great statue; the other was to build into the verse itself a sense of where the idea stood on the continuum between certainty and un. This structuring of the problem would be important to later poets, even as they moved in different directions.
The heart of the book is chapters three and four, when he looks most intensively at Rukeyser and Olson, and roots their response to science in their biographical experiences. Here, too, is where Middleton is at his best as a scholar, not willing to note general connections between scientific ideas and the poetry, but looking closely at the detail. He finds the strongest connection in the relationship Rukeyser and Olson had with Harvard during the 1930s and 1940s.
At the time, Harvard--in the interstices of its odd departmental structure, where a new sociology flourished--promoted the idea of understanding science via conceptual models; Harvard was also the locus of research on "fields" which were then thought to structure the material of the universe. The conceptual model itself would develop in unexpected ways, encouraging a young Thomas Kuhn who went on to write "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," which would lead to an entire field--the history and philosophy of science--that questioned science's epistemological basis.
But of immediate relevance for Middleton is that the idea of fields and "conceptual models" gave Rukeyser and Olson the materials for building a rapprochement between poetry and science. Rukeyser, at least in her earlier days, was of the opinion that poems could, if appropriately structured, be used to generate a kind of knowledge. (Middleton offers a number of readings of her works from this period; he is tough on her, but fair, noting where her thought was sometimes flabby or poorly articulated.) She held that poems, too, had a right of experiment and inquiry--and, indeed, she focused some of her poetry on writing about scientists.
Olson took a different tact. Like the early Rukeyser, he accepted the infallibility of science, but didn't think that poets could just generate knowledge, too. He thought that poetry could help to build an even bigger all-encompassing knowledge, one that swallowed up both science and poetry, while still holding poetry as an important machine for knowledge. Olson was also more taken with the notion of fields.
Robert Duncan appears late in chapter four, and offers a contrast to Olson's poetics. In his poems, Duncan treats science as fallible--like any kind of knowledge--and is more supple with the use of his voice: Olson never doubts his voice--indeed, his poetic practice is founded on the idea that the basic unit of poetry is the poet's individual breath, and so even when quoting from someone else, it is phrased in the beats of his own internal rhythms, his self--while Duncan has examples in his poems of his voice being co-opted by the characters of the poem. Later in her career--in a stretch that Middleton finds more refined, better--Rukeyser falls between these two, almost as accepting of science as Olson, and certainly celebrating science, though she is aware of its ethical limitations as Duncan is, but never shows herself as biting.
The final two complete chapters looks at the tole "Scientific American," the magazine played in poetic practice. (This is a pay-off on Middleton's earlier rhetoric, in which he argued that to be an American, as scientists defined it in the middle of the century, was to be scientific, or at least understand science: the construction of the layperson as "scientific American.") In Chapter six, Middleton looks at direct references between poets and "Scientific American"--Duncan and others were known to actually cite the magazine in their poems. The final chapter looks at the magazine in more contextual terms: it was not always possible to draw a direct connection between "Scientific American" and particular poems, but still a connection could be inferred.
The short coda announces the end of the era of "physics envy." From the 1920s tot he 1970s, physics, and especially nuclear physics, defined science, its excellence and mastery of nature. By the 1970s, that ground was being given to molecular biologists, who could now read "the book of life," in the genes--and expressed what they found as a book, what they did as reading. This kind of science offered a very different way for poets to relate to science, of course, one that was taken up, by among others, Duncan. But, as Middleton says in his last sentence, to follow these trends would be another book.
That last line illustrates the play of words that Middleton uses throughout--another book, the book of life--which is a not uncommon practice among literary critics these last two decades. But Middleton is more restrained than the literary critic. He still has a poets heart, even as he is practicing a kind of literary criticism: what he really wants to know is how these poems were created, and how they worked. This approach to the subject mater as a poet is both the book's best trait and--for me--its limitation.
Middleton consciously eschews literary criticism as incapable of answering the kinds of questions he wants answered. For him, it defends the boundary between science and literature that he wants to question. Neither, though, he says explicitly, is he a historian or historian of science, though he valiantly roots his story in excellent historical practice. This is all to the good--a unique intelligence worrying over an odd problem that has been often neglected.
The problem, though, for me, is that his focus is too narrow. We get Olson and Rukeyser and Duncan--and they stand, it seems, metonymically for all American poets responding to science int he middle of the 20th century. That's not exactly what Middleton says, but that's the impression he leaves--there are only vague allusions that there might be more going on. He notes, for example, that there were two general responses to the problems of writing poetry int he age of science: one was to borrow the prestige of physics and science, the other was what Olson and Rukeyser did, which was to borrow the analogies of physics. Of course, there were other ways of intervening--look at the surrealist writing of Lamantia, for example, which was profoundly influenced by the exploding of the atomic bomb. Middleton does make a brief reference to poets influenced by 'Pataphysics, which was a way of hyperbolically satirizing science, but it is unclear how it and they fit into his schema.
Ultimately, though, this is my problem--a wish for a different book. I want to know more; I want Middleton to have a wider vision. The book he did write, though, was insightful and interestign and well done.
Middleton is intrigued--fascinated, obsessed in the way of a practicing poet--by the relationship between science (particularly nuclear physics) and poets in mid-Century America. What happens when scientists arrogate to themselves all of the natural and social worlds? What do poets do?
He worries this problem in a series of chapters that are--by his own admission--more like interrelated essays, coming back, again and again, to the same poets and their same works, finding something new in them again and again, something more to say. His touchstones are Charles Olson and Muriel Rukeyser, especially, then Robert Duncan. (Appended to these central figures are extended analyses of Rae Armantrout, Jackson Mac Low, George Oppen, and Amiri Baraka.)
The book starts with something of a head-fake, physicists dismissing poetry out of hand as old-fashioned and obscurantist, self-confident in their knowledge of the universe, which sets up Middleton's question. In the next two chapters, though, he immediately qualifies this ideal-type, showing, inter alia, that scientists were not quite so sure in their own knowledge, nor so dismissive of poetry: indeed, they could refer to poetry in their own works as placeholder for ideas that were too abstract to express in language. (Which itself was an admission of their own fallibility.)
Middleton sees the poetic response to science evolving out of the work of Ezra Pound, who challenged poets to be more scientific, even as his own knowledge of science, on the evidence of his poetry, was relatively scant. Rather, he wrestled with a similar problematic: how to guarantee that the knowledge generated in his massive "Cantos," which ranged across a multitude of topics, was authentic. One way was to have it legitimized by a person of great statue; the other was to build into the verse itself a sense of where the idea stood on the continuum between certainty and un. This structuring of the problem would be important to later poets, even as they moved in different directions.
The heart of the book is chapters three and four, when he looks most intensively at Rukeyser and Olson, and roots their response to science in their biographical experiences. Here, too, is where Middleton is at his best as a scholar, not willing to note general connections between scientific ideas and the poetry, but looking closely at the detail. He finds the strongest connection in the relationship Rukeyser and Olson had with Harvard during the 1930s and 1940s.
At the time, Harvard--in the interstices of its odd departmental structure, where a new sociology flourished--promoted the idea of understanding science via conceptual models; Harvard was also the locus of research on "fields" which were then thought to structure the material of the universe. The conceptual model itself would develop in unexpected ways, encouraging a young Thomas Kuhn who went on to write "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," which would lead to an entire field--the history and philosophy of science--that questioned science's epistemological basis.
But of immediate relevance for Middleton is that the idea of fields and "conceptual models" gave Rukeyser and Olson the materials for building a rapprochement between poetry and science. Rukeyser, at least in her earlier days, was of the opinion that poems could, if appropriately structured, be used to generate a kind of knowledge. (Middleton offers a number of readings of her works from this period; he is tough on her, but fair, noting where her thought was sometimes flabby or poorly articulated.) She held that poems, too, had a right of experiment and inquiry--and, indeed, she focused some of her poetry on writing about scientists.
Olson took a different tact. Like the early Rukeyser, he accepted the infallibility of science, but didn't think that poets could just generate knowledge, too. He thought that poetry could help to build an even bigger all-encompassing knowledge, one that swallowed up both science and poetry, while still holding poetry as an important machine for knowledge. Olson was also more taken with the notion of fields.
Robert Duncan appears late in chapter four, and offers a contrast to Olson's poetics. In his poems, Duncan treats science as fallible--like any kind of knowledge--and is more supple with the use of his voice: Olson never doubts his voice--indeed, his poetic practice is founded on the idea that the basic unit of poetry is the poet's individual breath, and so even when quoting from someone else, it is phrased in the beats of his own internal rhythms, his self--while Duncan has examples in his poems of his voice being co-opted by the characters of the poem. Later in her career--in a stretch that Middleton finds more refined, better--Rukeyser falls between these two, almost as accepting of science as Olson, and certainly celebrating science, though she is aware of its ethical limitations as Duncan is, but never shows herself as biting.
The final two complete chapters looks at the tole "Scientific American," the magazine played in poetic practice. (This is a pay-off on Middleton's earlier rhetoric, in which he argued that to be an American, as scientists defined it in the middle of the century, was to be scientific, or at least understand science: the construction of the layperson as "scientific American.") In Chapter six, Middleton looks at direct references between poets and "Scientific American"--Duncan and others were known to actually cite the magazine in their poems. The final chapter looks at the magazine in more contextual terms: it was not always possible to draw a direct connection between "Scientific American" and particular poems, but still a connection could be inferred.
The short coda announces the end of the era of "physics envy." From the 1920s tot he 1970s, physics, and especially nuclear physics, defined science, its excellence and mastery of nature. By the 1970s, that ground was being given to molecular biologists, who could now read "the book of life," in the genes--and expressed what they found as a book, what they did as reading. This kind of science offered a very different way for poets to relate to science, of course, one that was taken up, by among others, Duncan. But, as Middleton says in his last sentence, to follow these trends would be another book.
That last line illustrates the play of words that Middleton uses throughout--another book, the book of life--which is a not uncommon practice among literary critics these last two decades. But Middleton is more restrained than the literary critic. He still has a poets heart, even as he is practicing a kind of literary criticism: what he really wants to know is how these poems were created, and how they worked. This approach to the subject mater as a poet is both the book's best trait and--for me--its limitation.
Middleton consciously eschews literary criticism as incapable of answering the kinds of questions he wants answered. For him, it defends the boundary between science and literature that he wants to question. Neither, though, he says explicitly, is he a historian or historian of science, though he valiantly roots his story in excellent historical practice. This is all to the good--a unique intelligence worrying over an odd problem that has been often neglected.
The problem, though, for me, is that his focus is too narrow. We get Olson and Rukeyser and Duncan--and they stand, it seems, metonymically for all American poets responding to science int he middle of the 20th century. That's not exactly what Middleton says, but that's the impression he leaves--there are only vague allusions that there might be more going on. He notes, for example, that there were two general responses to the problems of writing poetry int he age of science: one was to borrow the prestige of physics and science, the other was what Olson and Rukeyser did, which was to borrow the analogies of physics. Of course, there were other ways of intervening--look at the surrealist writing of Lamantia, for example, which was profoundly influenced by the exploding of the atomic bomb. Middleton does make a brief reference to poets influenced by 'Pataphysics, which was a way of hyperbolically satirizing science, but it is unclear how it and they fit into his schema.
Ultimately, though, this is my problem--a wish for a different book. I want to know more; I want Middleton to have a wider vision. The book he did write, though, was insightful and interestign and well done.
Displaying 1 of 1 review