something something atoms birds something
July 28, 2011 11:37 AM Subscribe
Half-remembered-poem-filter! About a decade ago, I read a poem (written by a woman, I'm pretty sure) about the Challenger disaster. I distinctly remember that she conveyed the concept of their atoms spreading into nature. Now I can't find it anywhere, and I hate when I can't find something on the internet!
I've Googled all over the place - I can find lots of poetry about various shuttles (and wow is some of it awful), but I can't find this one. I hope someone will remember it.
Thanks!
I've Googled all over the place - I can find lots of poetry about various shuttles (and wow is some of it awful), but I can't find this one. I hope someone will remember it.
Thanks!
Response by poster: I'm afraid not, though I do like that one.
posted by you're a kitty! at 12:19 PM on July 28, 2011
posted by you're a kitty! at 12:19 PM on July 28, 2011
Vibrissa beat me to it. I suspect that's got to be the one. It's quite nice.
posted by dhartung at 12:27 PM on July 28, 2011
posted by dhartung at 12:27 PM on July 28, 2011
Response by poster: dhartung: it's not, though from the description I was able to provide that one absolutely fits.
posted by you're a kitty! at 12:31 PM on July 28, 2011
posted by you're a kitty! at 12:31 PM on July 28, 2011
How weird -- or maybe not:
The letters sent to Concord High show how deeply, and maybe excessively, a huge number of ordinary people felt connected to someone they did not know except through the carefully scripted celebrity image NASA made of Christa McAuliffe. The space agency had spent a year constructing an American hero on the contradictory premise of her ordinariness....
Reopening those boxes and reading their contents was very much an intrusion. It was distasteful journalistically and personally, like desecrating a grave of memories, although obviously not enough to keep me from desecrating on. I was looking for words of blame. But it was striking how, without exception that I could see, the letters and poems sent in McAuliffe’s memory were devoid of the slightest accusation directed at NASA, or existential posturing at Creation. If anything—between children’s rainbow-colored drawings of felicity and poems titled “The Sun Will Rise Again,” “The Chosen Seven,” “Life Goes On”—the writings inclined toward fatalism, often crediting God for doing what God will, or, even more often, as one writer put it, conceding that “some things happen that can never be explained.”
posted by dhartung at 5:12 PM on July 28, 2011
The letters sent to Concord High show how deeply, and maybe excessively, a huge number of ordinary people felt connected to someone they did not know except through the carefully scripted celebrity image NASA made of Christa McAuliffe. The space agency had spent a year constructing an American hero on the contradictory premise of her ordinariness....
Reopening those boxes and reading their contents was very much an intrusion. It was distasteful journalistically and personally, like desecrating a grave of memories, although obviously not enough to keep me from desecrating on. I was looking for words of blame. But it was striking how, without exception that I could see, the letters and poems sent in McAuliffe’s memory were devoid of the slightest accusation directed at NASA, or existential posturing at Creation. If anything—between children’s rainbow-colored drawings of felicity and poems titled “The Sun Will Rise Again,” “The Chosen Seven,” “Life Goes On”—the writings inclined toward fatalism, often crediting God for doing what God will, or, even more often, as one writer put it, conceding that “some things happen that can never be explained.”
posted by dhartung at 5:12 PM on July 28, 2011
Best answer: I wonder if it was by Sharon Olds, though I can't find the actual poem online. From this book:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/blood-tin-straw-sharon-olds/1006160810
No real reason I'm thinking it might be the one except that she's one of the most widely read contemporary American woman poets, and her name immediately leapt into my mind when I read your question.
posted by editrixx at 9:58 AM on July 29, 2011
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/blood-tin-straw-sharon-olds/1006160810
No real reason I'm thinking it might be the one except that she's one of the most widely read contemporary American woman poets, and her name immediately leapt into my mind when I read your question.
posted by editrixx at 9:58 AM on July 29, 2011
Response by poster: Wow, editrixx, I don't know how you did that but you're absolutely right. Here it is.
Thanks, everyone, for your efforts. MetaFilter delivers once again.
posted by you're a kitty! at 2:27 PM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
Thanks, everyone, for your efforts. MetaFilter delivers once again.
posted by you're a kitty! at 2:27 PM on July 29, 2011 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
"High Flight"
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 11:44 AM on July 28, 2011 [1 favorite]