Overview

The Imaginary Present by award-winning poet and professor Amy Catanzano explores cutting-edge scientific fields such as particle physics and astrophysics, and branches of physics such as quantum theory and relativity, through a poetic vision equally loyal to the imagination and rationality. Drawing upon her groundbreaking research and artist residencies at major scientific research centers like CERN and the U.S. National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, as well as talks and poetry readings at esteemed institutions, Catanzano invites enthusiasts of poetry and science to consider what can be achieved through greater collaboration between these fields. In linked chapters that fluidly blend lyric essay, literary and scientific analysis, poetry, theory, and memoir, The Imaginary Present offers refreshing new insights on a wide range of thinkers over the past 100 years, including poets Rae Armantrout and M. NourbeSe Philip, novelists Alfred Jarry and Virginia Woolf, comic book writer Grant Morrison, and physicists Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. The introduction explores why poetry and physics are capable of jointly investigating our most fundamental questions about the universe and discusses the history of the art-science connection in addition to the author’s own journey. In searching for the groundbreaking ways that artists and scientists can collaborate, The Imaginary Present offers readers both reasoned grounding and poetic framing for an interdisciplinary poetics and praxis based on science.

Full Product Details

Author:   Amy Catanzano
Publisher:   The University of Michigan Press
Imprint:   The University of Michigan Press
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9780472039838

ISBN 10:   0472039830
Pages:   130
Publication Date:   19 February 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

Table of Contents Time is Not an Arrow: An Introduction to Quantum Poetics Writing the Speed of Light The Multiverse The New Spacetime ’Pataphysics is an Iridescent Veil Third Mind The Imaginary Present The Reader as a Quantum Observer Physics of the Impossible The Poetry Accelerator The Poetics of Scale Just Schrödinger the Text! Poetry & Science: The Two Most Incompatible Disciplines Spin the Kaleidoscope Poetry and the Fourth Dimension The People of the Fifth Dimension The Positron Passport To Be in Any Form The Password to the Quantum Supercomputer Poem Will Be NCC-1701 The Violet Doorway Poetry in Superposition U+F+O+L+A+N+G+U+A+G+E The Subtle Web of Thought Metaphor and Decay The Origami Time Machine The Physics of Existence The Matrix

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Author Information

Amy Catanzano is a professor and the poet-in-residence at Wake Forest University and the lead co-founder of The Entanglements Network, a global collective exploring the intersections of poetry and science. Author of three previous books, her honors include the PEN USA Literary Award in Poetry and Noemi Press Book Award in Fiction.

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