To the moon

I have a poem going to the moon.

No, really: way back at the beginning of 2022, I sent a poem in response to a call from Brick Street Poetry for an international collection of original poetry to be included in the Lunar Codex, a library of contemporary creative works that will be housed in three operational sites on the moon. The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon is slated for launch with NASA’s VIPER mission to the lunar south pole in late 2024. To my immense surprise and delight, my poem was selected.

The Polaris Trilogy includes work from all seven continents (researchers stationed in Antarctica contributed several poems) and dozens of nations and languages, several of them Indigenous. Brick Street plans a series of podcasts featuring poets who wrote in a language other than English, reading their poems in the original and then in English translation. (I’m almost as excited about this as I am about the whole lunar thing – I can’t wait to hear those poets and their work!)

Lead editor Joyce Brinkman talks about the Codex and Lucy Park reads her poem from the anthology, first in Korean and then in English translation in this interview by Susanna Song for the Sejong Cultural Society. Bonus feature: learn about sijo, an ancient Korean poetic form!

Although the nickel-based microfiche edition is reserved for the lunar mission, The Polaris Trilogy is available in paperback here on earth at Amazon. Click on the sample to read the foreword by project founder Samuel Peralta and the introduction from lead editor Joyce Brinkman.

Links:

NASA’s VIPER mission: https://www.nasa.gov/viper

Susanna Song’s interview with Lucy Park and Joyce Brinkman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDK0STIKHN0

Amazon purchase page for The Polaris Trilogy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWS61PV

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Not a poem

After weeks of what has felt like swirling around in the giant toilet bowl of life, there was yesterday: the closest I’ve been to a total solar eclipse. I gave my entire day over to it and annoyed everyone on Facebook by posting the whole time. Here’s a summary of the day:

First, I hooked my laptop up to the TV so I could watch the live stream from NASA on the big screen. There were more than a few production hiccups, but I don’t think any seriously geeky folk minded much.

Here was my own setup for watching the eclipse. The cat provided invaluable assistance, as always.

After making sure everything was working, there was nothing to do but wait for the moon.

The beginning!

It may be hard to see, but a thin layer of cloud passed overhead.

About this time I had a sudden realization: why hadn’t I bought some Moon Pies and Sun Chips to snack on?

Ten minutes later, the clouds had moved on.

Another ten minutes later.

Real life eclipse disasters: when you’re so distracted you put too much water in the rice cooker. 😕

The dog also helped with the eclipse watching.

This was about fifteen minutes after the previous eclipse photo.

More clouds passed through.

A friend on Facebook asked me where I was watching, to which I replied, “From my living room!”

Five minutes later.

At this point, the sun was clearly shining outside but it had gotten dim enough that my daughter turned on a light so she could read.

Getting close to the 95% of totality we were supposed to experience.

This was it.

I stepped outside. Everything was slightly dimmed, like I was wearing sunglasses. Except for human activity, everything was very still. The cicadas stopped singing and I could hear crickets.

Even the trees showed the eclipse.

The cat got a little weird and started racing around like she sometimes does in the middle of the night.

As the moon moved on, the day brightened back up to normal. The cicadas started ramping up again, and the crescent sun shadows cast by the leaves changed direction. That was curious and very interesting.

My youngest sister has been visiting, and it was delightful to share another eclipse with her. Her recollections about watching the 1979 eclipse together were invaluable in setting up for this year. It’s the same telescope, which is kind of cool.

And lots of love to my daughter, who gave up most of her afternoon to indulge me in my nerdy fangirlness.