THE POETICS OF SPACE

Dean Rader

            For centuries, writers have been utterly mesmerized by space. I’m not talking about science fiction or whether one believes in aliens but rather space itself and everything it connotes—the enormity of expanse, that which is endless and unending, the significance of our insignificance. Many of the earliest indigenous poems/songs/prayers marvel at the sun and the moon. One of the greatest poets to ever live, Dante Alighieri, ends each of the books of his Divine Comedy with the word stelle. Stars.

            We are always looking toward something.

I was thinking about all of these things when I arrived at the Space · Humanity seminar sponsored by Space Tango at the University of Kentucky. In a room full of physicists, trainers of astronauts, NASA scientists, and rocket experts, I was the only poet. Why a poet? In the science fiction novel Contact, Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster in the film) is asked to talk about what space was like. She responds, “No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet.” Kris Kimel, mad genius that he is, took Arroway at her word. This is sort of the opposite of Plato, who, in his Republic, suggests banning the poets. Not sure who is correct. Let’s go with Arroway & Kimel.

While the seminar facilitated fascinating discussions about technical issues like oxygen, weight, robots, and food, most of the conversation centered around humanistic concerns. How would we relate to each other? What mistakes should we not make next time around? Is it possible to settle a new place and not participate in a violent colonial enterprise? I talked about how we would need people to tell stories for the comfort that stories supply, because there would likely be a harrowing sense of what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke calls “un-at-homeness.” We need our poets to help tell us who we are, why we are, and what living means. In space, our most powerful tool just might be language.

And this is why it was such an honor to be asked to kick off the seminar by reading two of my poems. I don’t want to go on about them here—that seems tedious—but I will say that both poems not only consider space as a metaphor for exploration but also for a new path toward self-examination and realization. Whether terrestrial or other, that seems like a reasonable journey.

SELF-PORTRAIT IN SPACE 

We only know
who we are

in relation to
something else.

Perspective
is another word

for distance,
which is another  

word for removal.
The earth is a dime

rolling across a
black table. Death

is a bear wearing
a red hat shaped

like a cone.
Redemption is a

broken bar at
the front of a cage.

Loss is a sky
of stars, and you

in your ship of
flannel and 

cardboard the next
traveler through it.

MEDITATION ON EXPLORATION

It is time to look where we have not looked,

time to see what we will not see. It is

time even though we can’t to know what it

is we need to learn about the past, yes,

but also about the future, which is 

            not the same but is itself a mode of

time, something to be looked at not through, like

            a map of a land you have never seen,

never heard of, much less visited or

            even imagined. Perhaps it is time

to imagine a twilight, a moon of

            pure fire, the entire universe

a country lit by its own darkness, the

            spaces between its emptiness so full

it has already begun to begin.