The Universe in Verse 2017: Full Show – The Marginalian
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Favorite Reads<br>18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
Love Anyway
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss
How Kepler Invented Science Fiction and Defended His Mother in a Witchcraft Trial While Revolutionizing Our Understanding of the Universe
The Writing of “Silent Spring”: Rachel Carson and the Culture-Shifting Courage to Speak Inconvenient Truth to Power
Emily Dickinson’s Electric Love Letters to Susan Gilbert
Trial, Triumph, and the Art of the Possible: The Remarkable Story Behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”
Resolutions for a Life Worth Living: Attainable Aspirations Inspired by Great Humans of the Past
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
Singularity: Marie Howe’s Ode to Stephen Hawking, Our Cosmic Belonging, and the Meaning of Home, in a Stunning Animated Short Film
Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives
A Stoic’s Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety
A Rap on Race: Margaret Mead and James Baldwin’s Rare Conversation on Forgiveness and the Difference Between Guilt and Responsibility
The Science of Stress and How Our Emotions Affect Our Susceptibility to Burnout and Disease
Mary Oliver on What Attention Really Means and Her Moving Elegy for Her Soul Mate
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Related Reads<br>The Universe in Verse 2018: Full Show<br>Cutting Greens: Terrance Hayes Reads Lucille Clifton’s Spare and Stunning Ode to the Kinship of All Creatures<br>The Mushroom Hunters: Neil Gaiman’s Feminist Poem About Science, Read by Amanda Palmer
we are alive
The Universe in Verse 2017: Full Show
By Maria Popova
Find other seasons of The Universe in Verse here.
On April 24, 2017, I joined forces with the Academy of American Poets and astrophysicist Janna Levin to host The Universe in Verse at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works — an evening of poetry celebrating great scientists and scientific discoveries, and a protest against the silencing of science and the defunding of the arts, with all proceeds benefiting the Academy of American Poets and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
To our astonishment and delight, this seemingly esoteric idea drew an ardent audience of 850 — our maximum capacity — who lined up around the block to hear readings by Amanda Palmer, Rosanne Cash, Janna Levin, Elizabeth Alexander, Diane Ackerman, Billy Hayes, Sarah Jones, Tracy K. Smith, Jad Abumrad of Radiolab, Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York, and myself.
We celebrated pillars of science like Marie Curie, Euclid, Caroline Herschel, Oliver Sacks, the Harvard Computers, neutrinos, and the number pi, and read treasures like Adrienne Rich’s ode to women in astronomy, Campbell McGrath’s tribute to Jane Goodall, and the magnificent feminist poem about science Neil Gaiman wrote especially for the occasion.
Setting up for The Universe in Verse at Pioneer Works<br>Queue for The Universe in Verse<br>This magical...