Description
Book SynopsisLike the ever-widening universe, Standard candles expands on Alice Major’s earlier themes of family, mythology, and cosmology, teasing out subtle wonders in form and subject. Her voice resonates through experiments with old and new poetic forms as she imbues observed and imagined phenomena—from the centres of galaxies to the mysteries of her own backyard—with the most grounded and grounding moments of human experience. In Standard candles, readers will find an emotional dimension that seamlessly intersects with the dimensions of space and time. Fans of Alice Major will enjoy seeing her work through familiar themes, while readers new to her poetry will discover unexplored universes. Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter. She served as Edmonton’s first poet laureate and has been inducted into the city’s cultural hall of fame. A widely-published author, she has won many distinctions. Her most recent book is Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, which received the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction as well as a National Magazine Award gold medal. Her website is www.alicemajor.com. Let us compare cosmologies There is a beginning and a middle. There is an arc of narrative. There is a word, a large engraved initial. There is imperative— a cause, a god. Or not. There is an end. A purpose. Or maybe none. There is a plot with reasons, reason. There is a circus, a theatre stage of space and time. There are equations at the bottom or the top. There is a pantheon of matter, motion, scattered photons. And the questions every universe expects: what came before? What happens next?
Trade Review"Alice Major’s 10th poetry collection, Standard candles, covers a huge distance in its slim text, racing through a dozen different poetic forms and countless cosmologies. It references everything from Greek mythology to quantum uncertainty to Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the inventor of the standard candle itself. The book is like an ultra-dense kernel containing all things—history, theology, astronomy, geometry, an infinite list. It’s the universe right before the Big Bang, titanic forces contained within a few thousand tightly packed words, almost ready to explode and race endlessly out." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1W6w7s5] -- Bruce Cinnamon * Vue Weekly *
#6 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Nonfiction) for the week of November 06 2015. * The Edmonton Journal *
#10 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list for the week of November 13, 2015. * The Edmonton Journal *
"In her latest poetry collection, Standard candles, Alice Major continues to draw from science as a source of metaphor to ground the big ideas floating around the universe. Like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who bring scientific concepts to a public consciousness in their documentary television shows, Major takes up the poet's essential challenge to make grand concepts accessible and relatable to the reader. The result is a collection of thoughtfully crafted suites that feel mythological or biblical in scale, yet as familiar and common as our offices or kitchens.... In reading Standard candles, there is the potential for a most palpable experience of having one's mind blown. Readers will certainly find themselves putting the book down to stare out the window at the night sky and feel a sense of loneliness wrapped in communion." Prairie Books Now, Fall/Winter 2015 -- Steve Locke * Prairie Books Now *
#9 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list for the week of January 16, 2016. * The Edmonton Journal *
"In her poetry she uses her knowledge of specialised – even arcane – fields in the same way that British playwrights Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn have done: to provide startling and vivid analogies with the human dynamics of a complex emotional universe with which her readers will be more familiar. This is a handsomely produced and carefully organized book, divided into themed sections.... This substantial collection gives ample evidence of Major’s poetic craft and verbal dexterity.... [A] fine collection." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1PbKz4e] -- Michael Bartholomew-Biggs * londongrip.co.uk *
"The result is a study of the universe, certainly, but also of childhood wonder, hardscrabble wisdom and inevitable grief... To Major, [standard candles] isn't just euphonious, it's a poignant metaphor for mortality, loss and the connectedness of all things." -- Brent Wittmeier * Edmonton Journal *
"...one of Alice Major’s strengths is her ability to introduce an idea as sweeping as ‘science’ and distill it down to a moment, a memory, an object. No one but Major could have written this book: in a way no other poet consistently does, she grasps the edges of the universe and pulls it into a headlock. Her work has the precision of Leonard Cohen (whom she purposely invokes): a rare ability to condense the monumental into the quietly personal." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1Tg3uwA] -- Kimmy Beach * ARC Poetry Magazine *
"[In Standard candles, Major] has everything that I most love, most want, in poetry: wit, startling originality, the power to move without a shred of sentimentality or manipulation – and perhaps most of all, the ability to take you somewhere new both intellectually and experientially.” [Full post at http://bit.ly/25SHtqn] -- Katherine Venn * anthonywilsonpoetry.com *
"In this book Major provides us with some STEAM, i.e., Science Technology Engineering Art Math! She uses geometry, math and theories as entry points into slices of domestic life. Her poems are precise in their diction, dense in their content, and technically proficient. The entire work is a dense and beautiful existential rumination. The comparisons and metaphors are fresh and unexpected." -- Juror, 2016 Stephan G. Stephansson Award
"Standard candles is also a poetic inquiry of sorts – a skillful exploration of the overlap between poetry and science/mathematics. The poems range from abstract and philosophical to imagery-rich and personal. The book asks questions and puts forward theories that playfully push at the bounds of both science and poetry – for example, positing a pantheon of gods and goddesses in charge of various aspects of the universe and its creation. A high level of poetic skill informs this work, and the sections build upon one another to create a complex and varied collection." -- Juror, 2016 Stephan G. Stephansson Award
"Standard candles works on so many levels. It demonstrates the capacity of poetry to make connections between subjects of varying complexities with very intentional word combinations, strong sounds, complete conceits, different forms and material grounded in the quotidian, scientific and mythical. Each chapter, with a consistent theme or question and built upon, has a strength that if extracted they could easily stand on their own like an individual collection. Throughout, the individual poems are exceptional, each feeling complete because of their spine or axis that the theme(s), conceits and word choices support." -- Juror, 2016 Stephan G. Stephansson Award
Table of Contentsxi Sonnet for Valentine’s The set of all gods 2 The god of prime numbers 3 The god of infinities 4 The god of symmetry 5 The god of gravity 6 The god of salt 7 The god of kites and darts 8 The god of quantum uncertainty 9 The god of probabilities 10 The baker god 11 The god of automata 12 The god of teapots 14 The god of cats 16 The god of sparrows 17 The god of hearts 18 The jeweller god 19 The god of dark 20 The god of memory 21 The muse of universes Ordinary matter 24 Ordinary matter 26 Vacuum fluctuations 27 The helium thoughts 28 Advice to the lovelorn 30 Three-body problem 31 Love in three dimensions 32 Heavy elements 33 Local bubble 34 Catechism Standard candles 40 1 Address | 1959 42 2 Clouds of glory | 1908 45 3 Pythagorean theorem | 1965 46 4 Triangulation | 1808 49 5 The end of greatness | 2000 51 6 In the Castle of Stars | 1576 54 7 Supernova Type 1A | 1997 57 8 Then death returns 59 9 In all that void 60 10 Looking out to the dark | December 1928 62 11 d = (X- x)2 + (Y- y)2 + (Z- z)2 - c(T-t)2 | now 64 A prayer to bring you home Muscle of difficulty 68 Muscle of difficulty 70 Yet another crack in the foundation 72 Day’s eye 74 Expanding space 76 The movers’ dilemma 78 Rectangularization of the morbidity curve 80 Now, that amphibious moment 81 To the generations that will live a thousand years 82 Last scattering surface Let us compare cosmologies 86 1 Let us compare cosmologies 87 2 The Orphic follower 88 3 A pope 89 4 The evangelist 90 5 The philosophical skeptic 91 6 The nihilist 92 7 The totalitarian 93 8 The survivalist 94 9 The optimist 95 10 The magician 96 11 The baker 97 12 The consumer 98 13 The funeral director 99 14 The Manichean 100 15 The artist Sins and virtues 102 Avarice 104 Lust 105 Gluttony 107 Envy 108 Pride 110 Anger 111 Sloth 113 Mercy 115 Hope Shifting wavelengths 118 Tortoise and fern 120 Fingers of God 121 The barber’s paradox 122 Zeno’s paradox 123 Twin paradox 124 Sand reckonings: Eubulides’ paradox 125 Honeycomb conjectures 127 Bee violet 128 Optical molasses 129 Life adapts to inhospitable environments 130 How to tell a Martian my heart is on the left Underworlds 132 Persephone and I are underground 135 The outer dark 138 Cocytus 142 Niflheim 145 The man with no hands 147 Each of us the centre of a circle Postscript 150 God submits a grant application to the Canada Council 153 Notes 163 Acknowledgements
