Hi Mike,
I like the feel of this poem! The comparison between the Big Bang and 
thinking combine in exciting ways...
One thing to consider may be something that Richard Wilbur (an American 
poet) once said - that he often tries, after he's written a long sentence, 
to then write a short one. I'm thinking that because that somehow seems to 
replicate how I think about things (a long drawn out thought, then a sudden, 
abrupt one!). It could be that the thought process/procession of the poem 
may also be helped by pauses created by full stops.
I'm also noticing that you begin a lot of lines with the word "and" - and 
that may help reduce the number... (it's often the small, almost invisible, 
words like and/then/as/when/while that help a poem flow. I spend as much 
tome worrying over, changing, those little words as any of the bigger 
words!). But the way each thought flows into the next one is a delight (it 
has the feel of many poems written in the States where the flow of the poem 
"appears" far stronger than anything else).
Te-He-He... I'm no scientist (never have been, never will be) but you make a 
convincing case for what you say (by assuming it's right!)... And I like the 
way you use the word "like" at the end of the first stanza. I hear so many 
scientists having to resort ot similie/analogy when they claim to be talking 
facts! (The Open University programmes on the TV would be boring without the 
word "like"! I'd probably just creak on the sofa, back to sleep.)
And talking of "Ands" (which I was doing) the use of "And" at the start of 
the last two lines, however, really helps the poem do what it's doing.
Bob






>From: Mike Horwood <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub  Bang!
>Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 12:14:15 +0200
>
>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.


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