‘Explorational Blankness’: Twentieth- and twenty-first-century poets rewrite astronomy’s hidden and expanding universe

Abstract

The intersections between modern poetry and modern astronomy remain largely unmapped. This thesis seeks, in part, to correct this situation by exploring a range of poetry that engages with astronomy or cosmology. In a first part, this study analyses a number of anthologies of astronomical poems. The result of this analysis suggests not only that poets engaging with the universe and astronomy write in many different forms and genres, but also that references to spaceflight and the universe are used to gain a wider perspective on terrestrial affairs and give rise to often impassioned poems about political and social injustices and metaphysical concerns with the comparative insignificance of human existence in the face of cosmic expansion and expansiveness. The thesis proceeds, in separate chapters, with analyses of the works of five very diverse and partly under-studied poets: American poets Tracy K. Smith, Will Alexander, Amy Catanzano, Scottish poet Edwin Morgan, and Canadian poet-astronomer Rebecca Elson. Through a series of close readings of selected poems by these writers this thesis argues that these astronomical poems create starkly diverging images of the cosmos: the poems demonstrate that the universe often serves as an abstract creative space for various political agendas, social activism, literary and formal innovation, and, indeed, for astronomical research as well.

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