Sarah Howe is a Chinese-British poet who has won T.S. Eliot prize for her poetry collection 'Loop of Jade' in 2015. Her ability to blend personal reflections with broader cultural and historical contexts has established Sarah Howe as a significant voice in contemporary poetry. In 'Relativity', Sarah Howe explores the mysteries of the Universe fusing scientific concepts with poetic imagination. Moreover, Hawking recited 'Relativity' in a short film created by the artist Bridget smith. The poem 'Relativity' makes the readers explore the dark secrets or mysteries of space, time and light and so it helps humans find strength in symbiosis, the interconnectedness of all beings.
Relativity is a sonnet that deals with space, time, light, darkness and the black hole. As they are all mysterious complexities, the scientists need metaphors to explain them. 'Light' is the leit motif, the recurring image in this poem. The poem 'Relativity' begins with our waking up in the darkness brushed by panic and our groping for the things we know, where the duality of light as wave and particle is discussed. Here light is described not as it exists in the large scale world of gravity but as photons at the subatomic level of quantum physics. Then the two relativity theories, both the special relativity that explains the relations between space, time, mass and energy and the general relativity that fits into the mix are discussed. The analogy of train is used here to describe the dilation of time. Einstein proved that the time dilates like a perfect afternoon to an observer onboard of a moving train than a man on the platform on their viewing the flash the same light beam.
The dilation of time described through the flash that was seen from the speeding train, helps the reader to predict the black holes where parallel lines will meet. Here the poet mentions the black hole singularity predicted by Einstein and later unraveled by Stephen Hawking. Howe makes the readers think that both the space and time stop to exist the way we believe it to be. Thus the poem shifts its attention to black hole, the spatial space with high gravitational force, where even light cannot escape. Though the poem talks about the complexities of the Universe, the final couplet ends with a note of hope. As we have known the relativity and the like, our eyes will definitely adjust to the dark in the future. Thus the poem teaches the readers to explore the dark secrets or mysteries of space, time, and light as well as to embrace the unknown.
No comments:
Post a Comment