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| Equations of Power Exiled-in-America Press 2013 |
Today's scientists also possess (not-so-secret) books written in the special language of mathematics. The spells and charms in these books exert their power not by being spoken aloud but by providing detailed maps of the physical world that can take us places we would otherwise never be able to go.
The "magic" of modern physics resides in a few basic equations which are usually confined to scientific circles. Now psychobotanist Dale Pendell breaks these equations out of their scientific contexts and turns them into verse. Pendell is best known for his Pharmako Trilogy, a deep and original study of mind-altering plant-based substances from coffee, thru cannabis, to Ecstasy and LSD. His work includes a novel The Great Bay, a book about Burning Man (Inspired Madness) and several other books and essays some of which can be found on his website. Pendell has a clear and distinctive poetic voice which has been likened to William Blake, Gary Snyder and Robinson Jeffers.
The big stars of Equations of Power are Schrödinger's and Maxwell's equations from physics. But Pendell's widely cast net also hauls up the chemistry of gunpowder (The Fire Drug) and of bronze (The Bronze Sword), the natural forces that form serpentine rock and the nautilus shell, nuclear physics, the equivalence of energy and mass and Consciousness Explained. Here are some excerpts from Pendell's new book plus the short poem The Wave Collapse, in which Pendell ponders the central mystery of quantum theory--how do quantum possibility waves "collapse" to form the world's actual facts?
Schrödinger's Wave Equation
...
Erwin Schrödinger spent the night
in adulterous fornication
with his mistress.
By morning he was thinking
about waves
...
Wave being wife, or,
on that night, close enough,
the good physicist assumed
that the energy of the whole thing
was conserved--that a push here
created an equal and opposite
pull there.
...
The Fire Drug
...
The violence of the mixture was noted--
some burned faces and a burned-down house.
It took another century or two of experiment,
continually increasing the proportion of nitre--
it seemed impossible to add too much.
At three-quarters, the mixture exploded.
This was new. They called it huo yao: the fire-drug,
In a bamboo tube, fire shot from the end--
they were strapped to the tips of spears,
launched as rockets, or sealed as bombs.
...
The Wave Collapse
On the beach where I grew up
long shore break--
the huge combers breaking
all at once--
sometime with
a loud crack
the water
pulled and stretched
the hollow tube like a
tunnel of light
barely a foot of water, the
sand sucked skyward
for one extended and suspended
moment, different
from the crash of the water
against the beach sand,
which, at night,
would shake the house.
One wonders
how chlorophyll
can be so quiet
snatching fire
from the sun.
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| Dale Pendell, the psychobotany guy |
3 comments:
what a great review. I'm going to have to get a copy!
I also appreciate your review on this one. Thanks!
Heard him interviewed in the KUSP podcast. Loved his poetry and his views on poetry.
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