Embrace the Night Sky: 6 Prompts for writing about the stars

 “And I thought that, like the Earth and Moon and all the planets, perhaps every one of us is ancient and full of unknowable history. look up at the sky, or out across the earth, and you can be swept away by glorious flights of the imagination, and the humbling realization that in the true scheme of creation, all the many things we know amounted to almost nothing at all.” – Tracy K Smith

A Clear Midnight by Walt Whitman (1892)

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

 

Artificial lights have become such common nighttime fixtures that we take them for granted. But what do brighter nights mean for people and wildlife? The effects of light pollution go beyond our diminishing view of the stars, but the solutions can have an immediate impact. 

This summer the Truckee Cultural District was honored to be asked by the Town of Truckee to be a part of Truckee’s first-ever “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” photo contest with opening reception held Friday, July 26th. More than 50 people attended celebrating photo contest winners in 3 categories awarded by Truckee Town Council members. 

The night-time photography competition received an impressive number of submissions, and was launched earlier this year to encourage residents and visitors to limit light pollution and enjoy the natural beauty of the night sky as part of the Dark Skies movement.

“We were so impressed by the number and variety of submissions from our community. The stunning images highlight a variety of photographic and lighting techniques while showcasing the natural and cultural places iconic to Nevada County,” said Heather Heckler, GVNC Cultural DistrictProgram Manager and administrator of the contest.

You can visit the art gallery at the Truckee airport to view Truckee’s Dark Skies show as part of the TTAD “Art at the Airport”.

One of the best spots for dark skies observations by the naked eye is Southern Sierra Nevada High Country. There are wonderful dark skies along the whole spine of the Southern Sierra from Mono Hot Springs down to Kennedy Meadows. That's the Kennedy Meadows on the Kern River, not the one near Sonora Pass, though that one's not half bad either.

March Moon by Langston Hughes (1926)

The moon is naked.
The wind has undressed the moon.
The wind has blown all the cloud-garments
Off the body of the moon
And now she’s naked,
Stark naked.

But why don’t you blush,
O shameless moon?
Don’t you know
It isn’t nice to be naked?

 

Sarah Howe, talking about how she wrote the poem Relativity below:

Science relies on metaphor—traditionally the poet’s tool—to describe and communicate itself. This was a recurring theme of my chats with scientific colleagues, who in their teaching come up with analogies to explain complex ideas for their students or phenomena taking place at a level we can’t see. They were conscious, too, of how these metaphors can mislead, making the known and the unknown seem more alike than they really are. I wanted to explore that tension in “Relativity,” whose title points to Einstein’s celebrated theory of 1915, a hundred years old this year. For me, relativity also suggests the relationship between two things in a comparison—the ligature of the word like, which chimes through my poem—whose interplay enables us to think. – Sarah Howe, The Paris Review

Relativity

for Stephen Hawking

When we wake up brushed by panic in the dark
our pupils grope for the shape of things we know.

Photons loosed from slits like greyhounds at the track
reveal light’s doubleness in their cast shadows

that stripe a dimmed lab’s wall—particles no more—
and with a wave bid all certainties goodbye.

For what’s sure in a universe that dopplers
away like a siren’s midnight cry? They say

a flash seen from on and off a hurtling train
will explain why time dilates like a perfect

afternoon; predicts black holes where parallel lines
will meet, whose stark horizon even starlight,

bent in its tracks, can’t resist. If we can think
this far, might not our eyes adjust to the dark?

 

 Prompts:

• Choose one poem from this post and begin by describing how this poem is being scientific or illustrating a type of space.  How could you use this similar method in your own poem?

• Choose a poem’s approach to considering science – a list, a naming, a playful riff on language and sound, a comparison or metaphor, a personification, a close observation – and model after it in you own poem. Begin by describing how could you use this similar method in your own poem?

• One way to begin is to choose a simple object/subject (Grass) or (Bird) or (Erosion) or (Mask) or (Hug) and begin with close observation and description. As you write, become more and more specific.

• Write about a constellation or a planet of another celestial object that you have studied or observed over many times and from many places over many times in your life. How many of the moments can you capture, one sentence or  two for each time  and place and memory?

• From A Poet’s Glossary by Edward Hirsch:“The letter poem is addressed to a specific person and written from a specific place, which locates it in time and space. It imitates the colloquial familiarity of a letter, though sometimes in elaborate forms. But unlike an actual letter, the letter poem is never addressed to just its recipient; it is always meant to be overheard by a third person, a future reader.” Write a letter to the moon, the sun, the solar system. What can you ask it that you cannot ask of anyone else?

• Write one sentence for each memory of sleeping outside under the stars or looking up at a night sky