08.01.2020 In August 2019 I learned that Scientific American – a magazine I’ve been reading since I was in high school – had carried poetry in its early issues, beginning in 1845. That discovery, coupled with my longstanding interest in poems about science, inspired me to ask the current editors whether they’d consider reinstating poetry in the magazine.
They responded with surprising enthusiasm, especially as they had been looking for a new feature to introduce in 2020, Scientific American’s 175th anniversary year. The new monthly poetry column got a name, “Meter,” which seemed an ideal mix of poetry and science. And I got my name on the masthead of my favorite magazine as a contributing editor.
My original idea was to select from among the nerdy poems I’d collected over the years, such as “Pi” by Wislawa Szymborska, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996, and “Cosmic Gall” by novelist John Updike, about neutrinos. Instead, the editors challenged me to commission all new work. With little time to make the deadline for the January 2020 issue, I invited my dear pal, poet and nature writer Diane Ackerman, to create something for the inaugural column. She was at work on a novel about 17th century naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, and took the opportunity to write a poem about her.
An ongoing, ever widening search has brought in poets to treat topics in many fields of science, from mathematics and mycology to astronomy, geology, pathology, physics, chemistry, and climate change. By the end of its first year (of many, I hope), Meter will have showcased the works of a Pulitzer Prize winner in Poetry, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics, and the current national Poet Laureate of the UK. As many women as men have contributed, including some at the very start of their careers.
For the August 2020 issue, the editors have taken Meter out from behind the magazine’s paywall, so Jessica Reed’s poem about gravitational waves can be readily enjoyed beyond the world of Scientific American subscribers.