Saturday's Poem: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

That’s by Emily Dickinson, that strange and brilliant creature, whose words mean more to me with every day I live. This particular choice is prompted by Higgs Boson.

I had been reading headlines about the discovery of this elusive particle seen as "key to the universe" and had the sense that something truly wondrous was unfolding that I could not begin to grasp. I found some reassurance in an article by Robert Wright that concluded with these words:

“In sum: I personally continue to have no idea what the Higgs boson is. And I think the physicists who 'understand' what it is can do so only because they don't have the layperson's compulsion to think about the world in ways that are ultimately metaphorical. Or, at least, these physicists have dropped the idea that to truly understand something is to have a crystal-clear metaphor in your mind, a metaphor that doesn't break down at any point and doesn't contain internal contradictions. For them, apprehending a purely mathematical description of something is tantamount to comprehending it. For the rest of us, I suspect, the Higgs belongs in the same category as various other parts of modern physics: It is yet more evidence that the human mind, to the extent that it was designed by natural selection to truly comprehend anything at all, was designed to comprehend the macroscopic world, not the microscopic world.S o, as for the question of what this Higgs Boson thing ultimately "means": It means we should all try to have some intellectual humility, because the thing we're using to try to understand the world--the human brain--is, in the grand scheme of things, a pretty crude instrument. Or, I should say: That's what I think the Higgs Boson means."

I also thought there was a case in there as to why poetry is as important as science. I shared this excerpt with my poet-friend Dan Gerber, whose recent poetry seems more and more imbued with physics and astronomy...or, as he said, about his incomprehension and his need to embrace that.

"Robert Wright is correct," wrote Dan. "We can only begin to get our minds around these things metaphorically. But then I believe that the universe itself is an immense metaphor. For what? For Higgs Boson, of course. And I'm reminded of Pound saying that poetry is a kind of inspired mathematics in which the poet must find equations for the emotions. And I'm reminded of Emily writing that we must tell the truth, but must tell it slant because, seen directly, the truth would blind us. I carry all my scientific reading when I go out to look at the night sky and then spend the hour greeting and admiring old, really old, friends."

And that's what prompted me to return to Emily and rediscover that particular poem.

Let us be grasped by what we cannot grasp. Let us be dazzled gradually.