Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Finding poems in Maria Mitchell's words

SO MANY words and phrases are poetic
that are NOT YET called poems.

A recent Facebook posting for the Max Planck Society featured this picture and quote
by 19th century American Astronomer Maria Mitchell (1818-1889):

Finding the Facebook item led me to seek more words by Maria Mitchell; at BrainyQuotes.com I found a collection several dozen statements from this scientist --  several of which I identified as found poems.  Two of these -- shaped into a syllable snowball and a Fib -- I offer below.

       The
       world of
       learning is
       so broad, and the
       human soul is so
       limited in power!    
                                         Snowball, per-line syllable counts: 1,2,3,4,5,6

                    Don't      
                    look      
                    at stars      
                    as bright spots      
                    only. Try to take      
                    in the vastness, the universe.               
 Fib, per-line syllable counts: 1,1,2,3,5,8

No comments:

Post a Comment