This work explores the amphibian world of human consciousness, where waking and dreaming are capable of animating and playing a private being or ambihuman others. Beyond the careful observation and considered presentation emerges a deep respect for nature and life. Where Rilke's poetry moves towards the stars, Caratheodory's moves deeper into the earth. Poetry is treated as an instrument of learning and research. These poems are like fingers probing the interconnectedness of beings in a pan ecology of the earth (poetry as a discipline of ecology). The poet grants existence and consciousness to all beings and expands his own accordingly. Reason and feeling, left-brain and right, unfold as the poet reports other experiences and perspectives. Coleridge, Shelley, Novalis, and Wordsworth urged the need to keep science and poetry together. Later, Auden argued that knowledge of meteorology, botany, geology, and astronomy was necessary before a poet could begin to speak poetically at all. Caratheodory falls into the tradition of modern scientists, like Eisely and Huxley, who sometimes wrote in poetic form. Grandson of the French thermodynamicist, and an astrophysicist himself for over twenty years, he has been writing since 1963. This is a surprising book by a scientist who has a feeling for the otherness of nature.
About the Author: A. M. Caratheodory was born at the time of the largest solar eruption ever recorded-a fact he discovered when he became interested in astronomy. After basic schooling in Virginia, he attended the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, where he studied astrophysics. His work on mathematical models of stars received awards from NSF, NASA, USN, USAF, Goddard Institute, Bausch & Lomb, among others. Dropping out of school as a conscientious objector and peace activist, he was drafted. He enlisted in the Air Force, working as a microwave researcher, satellite track technician, medical corpsman, and janitor. After an honorary discharge, he worked as an observer, research assistant, then research associate in astrophysics for a number of installations, including Cambridge Research Labs, Lunar and Planetary Lab, and Steward Observatory. After three federal budget cuts suggested a change in careers, he worked at a series of jobs that included artist's model, lifeguard, truck driver, dishwasher, gardener, bookstore clerk, library supervisor, gymnastics teacher, printer, book editor, opera set painter, animal hospital attendant, television repairman, auto mechanic's apprentice, and computer engineer. Returning to school, he took courses in anthropology, economics, psychology, biology, and ecology, before finishing his terminal degree in astrophysics. He works as a consultant for an observatory in Chile, where he is also a forest activist in the Beech forests of Tierra del Fuego. Finding that his experience followed Auden's prescription for poets, he has written in poetic, as well as scientific, forms. He has been published in numerous local, regional, and international journals; since 1984, he has worked only on book-length themes. His book Fragments was a finalist in the National Poetry Series for 1994. He continues to work hard to keep to the dictates of Wordsworth and Novalis to be a good poet.