WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.740 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.740 --> 00:00:08.580 align:middle line:84%
I'm going to start with a poem
called "Planetarium," which

00:00:08.580 --> 00:00:11.940 align:middle line:84%
is thinking of
Caroline Herschel, who

00:00:11.940 --> 00:00:15.450 align:middle line:84%
was the sister of the
astronomer William Herschel,

00:00:15.450 --> 00:00:20.610 align:middle line:84%
of Herschel's comet,
who herself was

00:00:20.610 --> 00:00:24.270 align:middle line:84%
a no mean sighter
of comets, and who

00:00:24.270 --> 00:00:29.200 align:middle line:84%
worked with him throughout his
life, and until her own death.

00:00:29.200 --> 00:00:34.380 align:middle line:84%
And when I wrote this
poem, I wasn't aware

00:00:34.380 --> 00:00:37.680 align:middle line:84%
that there had been
other women astronomers--

00:00:37.680 --> 00:00:41.200 align:middle line:90%
Maria Mitchell, one of them.

00:00:41.200 --> 00:00:45.750 align:middle line:84%
I always had a kind of
yen for astronomy, myself,

00:00:45.750 --> 00:00:50.070 align:middle line:84%
and used to spend a
lot of time reading

00:00:50.070 --> 00:00:54.820 align:middle line:84%
lay works on astronomy
at one point in my life.

00:00:54.820 --> 00:00:59.340 align:middle line:84%
And this poem, in a
sense, comes out of that.

00:00:59.340 --> 00:01:05.610 align:middle line:84%
There is a quotation in
the poem from Tycho Brahe,

00:01:05.610 --> 00:01:13.440 align:middle line:84%
the Danish astronomer, who
said that his observations were

00:01:13.440 --> 00:01:16.370 align:middle line:84%
'virile, precise, and
absolutely certain."

00:01:16.370 --> 00:01:20.600 align:middle line:90%


00:01:20.600 --> 00:01:23.860 align:middle line:84%
"A woman in the
shape of a monster,

00:01:23.860 --> 00:01:27.610 align:middle line:84%
a monster in the shape
of a woman, the skies

00:01:27.610 --> 00:01:30.010 align:middle line:90%
are full of them.

00:01:30.010 --> 00:01:34.450 align:middle line:84%
A woman 'in the snow among
the clocks and instruments

00:01:34.450 --> 00:01:37.720 align:middle line:84%
or measuring the
ground with poles.'

00:01:37.720 --> 00:01:43.090 align:middle line:84%
In her 98 years to
discover eight comets.

00:01:43.090 --> 00:01:46.120 align:middle line:84%
She whom the moon
ruled, like us,

00:01:46.120 --> 00:01:52.960 align:middle line:84%
levitating into the night sky,
riding the polished lenses.

00:01:52.960 --> 00:01:56.260 align:middle line:84%
Galaxies of women,
there doing penance

00:01:56.260 --> 00:02:04.060 align:middle line:84%
for impetuousness, ribs chilled,
in those spaces of the mind.

00:02:04.060 --> 00:02:09.910 align:middle line:84%
An eye, 'virile, precise,
and absolutely certain,' from

00:02:09.910 --> 00:02:14.560 align:middle line:84%
the mad webs of Uranusborg,
encountering the Nova.

00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:18.700 align:middle line:84%
Every impulse of light
exploding from the core as life

00:02:18.700 --> 00:02:20.860 align:middle line:90%
flies out of us.

00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:26.140 align:middle line:84%
Tycho whispering at last,
'let me not seem to have lived

00:02:26.140 --> 00:02:29.050 align:middle line:90%
in vain.'

00:02:29.050 --> 00:02:31.540 align:middle line:90%
What we see, we see.

00:02:31.540 --> 00:02:34.420 align:middle line:90%
And seeing is changing.

00:02:34.420 --> 00:02:36.130 align:middle line:84%
The light that
shrivels a mountain

00:02:36.130 --> 00:02:38.650 align:middle line:90%
and leaves a man alive.

00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:44.080 align:middle line:84%
Heartbeat of the pulsar, heart
sweating through my body.

00:02:44.080 --> 00:02:47.650 align:middle line:84%
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus.

00:02:47.650 --> 00:02:52.540 align:middle line:90%
I am bombarded, yet I stand.

00:02:52.540 --> 00:02:55.390 align:middle line:84%
I have been standing all
my life in the direct path

00:02:55.390 --> 00:02:58.870 align:middle line:84%
of a battery of signals, the
most accurately transmitted,

00:02:58.870 --> 00:03:02.440 align:middle line:84%
most untranslatable
language in the universe.

00:03:02.440 --> 00:03:05.710 align:middle line:84%
I am a Galactic cloud
so deep, so involuted,

00:03:05.710 --> 00:03:09.790 align:middle line:84%
that a light wave could take
15 years to travel through me.

00:03:09.790 --> 00:03:11.980 align:middle line:90%
And has taken.

00:03:11.980 --> 00:03:15.400 align:middle line:84%
I am an instrument in the
shape of a woman trying

00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:18.370 align:middle line:84%
to translate
pulsations into images

00:03:18.370 --> 00:03:21.670 align:middle line:84%
for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction

00:03:21.670 --> 00:03:23.520 align:middle line:90%
of the mind."

00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:25.000 align:middle line:90%