Science Poems for January 2011: 19

Last April I posted a science sonnet a day in celebration of National Poetry Month (index with links here). This month I am posting a science poem a day, written in various traditional forms, in honor of Science Online 2011.

The "fifth annual international meeting on Science and the Web" ran from Jan. 13-16. Click on the logo below to access the conference page, which has links to posts, tweets, photos, and videos from the event.



As with the sonnets, my January poems take their cues from science-based articles. I also have two works in a special science poem section (vol. 33 #5/6) of Star*Line, journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. You can read my "Ciliate Sestina" here.

Also, two sonnets from last April's collection, "In Development" and "Manipulations," have made it into Open Laboratory 2010 Click on the badge below for links to the 50 essays, 6 poems, and 1 cartoon in the collection.


(Click here to see Andrea Kuszewski's gorgeous cover!)

Today's poem takes its cue from "Weekend Featured Image: Massive New Supernova Shrouded in Shell of Gas & Dust" (The Daily Galaxy, Jan. 16, 2011). Click on the article link to learn more about the research. To learn more about the traditional poetic structure used, click on the form name.

Grand Raiment
(Form: Pirouette)

Far-off supernova
Weaves its massive death shroud,
A centuries-old cloak.
Great blast of brightness fades,
Hidden in darkest dust.
Hidden in darkest dust,
Rarer hypernova
Glows with shocked oxygen,
Its gamma rays bursting
'Round buttoned-up black hole.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too


Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo
Free downloads at the Deviations website, Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.