The Universe in Verse

In this book of illustrated essays, Maria Popova, creator of The Marginalian, presents a celebration of the human search for truth and beauty through the lenses of science and poetry. "Poetry and science," as Popova writes in her introduction, "are instruments for knowing the world more intimately and loving it more deeply." In 15 short essays on subjects ranging from the mystery of dark matter and the infinity of pi to the resilience of trees and the intelligence of octopuses, Popova tells the stories of scientific searching and discovery. These stories are interwoven with details from the very real and human lives of scientists—many of them women, many underrecognized—and poets inspired by the same questions and the beauty they reveal. Each essay is paired with a poem reflecting its subject by poets ranging from Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Maya Angelou, Diane Ackerman, and Tracy K. Smith, and is stunningly illustrated by celebrated artist Ofra Amit. Together, they wake us to a "reality aglow with wonder." 

Maria Popova thinks and writes about our search for meaning—sometimes through science and philosophy, sometimes through poetry and children's books, always through the lens of wonder. She is the creator of The Marginalian, born in 2006 under the outgrown name Brain Pickings and included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valuable materials, author of Figuring and The Snail with the Right Heart, and maker of The Universe in Verse—a charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry.

Poetry, Science, and the Cosmos of the Possible    The Singularity and Our Elemental Belonging      Singularity (after Stephen Hawking) by Marie Howe   Flowers and the Birth of Ecology      Bloom by Emily Dickinson   Entropy and the Art of Alternative Endings      The More Loving One by W.H. Auden   Henrietta Leavitt, Edwin Hubble, and Our Hunger to Know the Universe      From My God, It’s Full of Stars by Tracy K. Smith   Dark Matter and Our Yearning for Light      Let There Always Be Light by Rebecca Elson   Emily Noether, Symmetry, and the Hidden Order of Things      Figures of Thought by Howard Nemerov Trees and the Optimism of Resilience       Optimism by Jane Hirshfield   Pi and the Seductions of Infinity      Pi by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak   Euclid and the Dazzling Beauty of Universal Truth      Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare by Edna St. Vincent Millay   Radioactivity and the Mystery of Matter      Power by Adrienne Rich   The Octopus and the Unknown      Impossible Blues by Maria Popova   This Mote of Matter      A Brave and Startling Truth by Maya Angelou   The Search for Life      We Are Listening by Diane Ackerman   Mushrooms and the Creative Spirit      Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath   Singularity Squared      Singularity (after Marie Howe) by Marissa Davis   Acknowledgments