One of the difficulties, and there are many, in writing about science and
philosophy in a poem, is that fancy confounds logic and the science and
philosophy become undermined as a result. Where is the logical train that
concludes that since a vacuum does not in exist in fact or theory then the
Universe is like an idea before it is thought? The analogy appears false to
me and the reasoning unsound. You also self contradict by saying 'nothing
cannot exist' and later 'before the thought there was nothing'. Again
Science thinks rather that the Universe 'began' rather than it was
'created'.
One of my own personal tests as to whether what appears to be a poem is in
fact prose is to write out the piece without line breaks and see how it
reads. In this case this appears to be prose. However it is a personal test
and no more valuable than that.
You write quite elegantly, Mike, but your habit of beginning a sentence with
a conjunction spoils your naturally precise style.You do this in this poem
and others you have submitted. Now this can be a breath control punctuation
idiosyncrasy but other poets submitting here impose reading aloud patterns
without punctuation or very little. You punctuate because you see the need
for it, as I do in much that I write, but to put a full stop before 'And' is
, in my book, poor style. Omit either the full stop or the 'And '.I think
you will find the work does not suffer.
This is all my opinion only and to be valued in that sense. Regards Arthur

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Horwood" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2002 10:14 AM
Subject: New sub Bang!


Having decided that the meaning of life is too big a morsel to chew
comfortably, in this piece I restrict myself to the origins of the universe.


Bang!

It came to me in a blinding flash
like the Big Bang,
how much thinking is like creating the universe.
How scientists say that matter and energy
and even time only came into existence with the Bang
and how the infant universe created
time and space as it expanded,
just like a thought that moves
through ideas and events and figures,
creating them as it goes.
And how nothing cannot exist.
Not only is a vacuum impossible
in nature, but even in theory,
so the universe before time and matter
must be like an idea before it was thought.

And then it came to me in a blinding flash,
how one way to think of the universe
is to think of it as a thought,
and how before the thought was made
there was nothing, not even absence
and only with the thought came
all the other points of reference,
time and place and events and their horizons.
Like when you´ve worked an idea out
and put it down on paper
and stand back, and it´s all there,
occupying its own space on the page
with all the lines expanding
and the words spinning like planets.

And how much our universe is like that,
just a thought that someone has had.