The Poetry of the Stars with Midge Goldberg and Yun Wang Part 2

The LIUniverse with Dr. Charles Liu

Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu continue our exploration into the poetry of the stars with Part 2 of our episode featuring poet/astronomer/cosmologist Dr. Yun Wang and poet/author Midge Goldberg, editor of “Outer Space: 100 Poems.”

We pick up right where we left off in Part 1, with a discussion of standard candles and how Edwin Hubble used Cepheid Variable Stars to determine the distance to Andromeda – incorrectly, as Chuck explains.

We then find out that Yun is working on not one, but two upcoming space telescopes: The Euclid Space Telescope launching in July 2023 and the Roman Space Telescope, a Hubble-class space telescope named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, launching in 2027.

As with Part 1, The LIUniverse couldn’t possibly have two poets as guests on the show without a little poetry reading and analysis. Allen kicks it off by reading a Walt Whitman poem, “A Noiseless, Patient Spider.” Midge follows up with a reading excerpted from “My God, It’s Full of Stars” by Tracy K. Smith, one of the first poems she chose to put into “Outer Space: 100 Poems.” Yun reads both the original Chinese version and then the translation of a poem by Su Dongpo, the Song Dynasty poet who is the third of the greatest poets in Chinese history, followed by an English translation. (The group discussed the other two, Du Fu and Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty era in China, in Part 1 – just another reason to go and listen if you haven’t already, poetry fans!)

Chuck reads from a poem by Salvatore Quasimodo, the Nobel prize-winning Italian poet, after which he reminds us all about Commander Data’s unfortunate attempt at poetry about his cat Spot on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Allen begrudgingly reads the first couplet, and Midge describes what happens when AI writes a sonnet.

Finally, Charles ends the episode with a reading and discussion of “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” which Yun explains she doesn’t hate anymore, but still doesn’t love.

If you’d like to know more about Dr. Yun Wang and her many scientific and poetic publications, see her bio page at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech): https://web.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/wang/.

To learn more about Midge Goldberg, visit her website: https://www.midgegoldberg.com/ or follow her on Twitter at @MidgeGoldberg.

“Outer Space: 100 Poems” is published by Cambridge University Press: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/outer-space-100-poems/7D8D674BE0C7215CCC9FD0284044B819

We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon.

Credits for Images Used in this Episode:

– Edwin Hubble in 1931 – John Hagemeyer, Public Domain

– Euclid Space Telescope (rendering) – European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 3.0

– Roman Space Telescope (rendering) – NASA (WFIRST Project and Dominic Benford), Public Domain

– Painting of Su Dongpo (posthumous) – Zhao Mengfu, 1301, Public Domain