A novel method in verse
Testing the hypothesis that the medium is the message
To study fire in all its glory
Takes time and wit and funding too.
The earth ablaze tells quite a story
Albeit one few listen to.
But reading Pushkin sparked a question:
Could versifying aid digestion
of otherwise dull, arid facts
about wildfire and its impacts?
Dry weather, fuel and now ignition.
The crackle soon becomes a roar
(a warming world holds more in store -
the bitter fruits of my tuition).
The roar subsides, the earth abides,
and science, scholars hope, provides.
I just finished reading Eugene Onegin and felt compelled to attempt my own stanza that follows the structure of Pushkin’s legendary novel in verse. Just what the structure is, well I couldn’t put it any better than Douglas Hofstadter, so here he is:
Pushkin’s “was a very special form of sonnet. In the first place, each of its lines was composed of uncompromising iambic tetrameter - stresses falling always on even-numbered syllables. In the second place, all stanzas shared exactly the same rhyme scheme: ABAB, CCDD, EFFEGG. And thirdly - and this is the touch that, at least for me, really gives these stanzas their distinct flavor - he chose an elegant and catchy quasi-alternating pattern of feminine and masculine rhymes.” [emphasis his]
Hofstadter goes on to note that because of this rhyming structure there is “a slight metric irregularity to the Onegin stanza: 9898, 9988, 988988, to spell out the syllable-counts explicitly.”
This is not my first attempt at setting fire to some floral poetry, but I shall spare you, dear reader, for now.
Stop and smell the red pen
Peer review is a fascinating, strange, troubling, time consuming and integral part of modern science. It’s also a recent development, apparently. I am reminded of a story I heard about Einstein receiving criticism of one of his papers from the editors at a journal and basically issuing his own rejection of their rejection.
Anyway, I recently had the pleasure of reviewing a great paper. It was topical, thorough, beautifully written, and I found a typo so was able to justify my existence. You can’t ask for much more than that.