1/ Gus­tave Doré’s illus­tra­tion of Par­adiso XXXI*:

2/ From An Excep­tion­ally Simple Theory of Everything,” Gar­rett Lisi’s pro­posed model of the uni­verse, which is based on the E8 geom­e­try**:

1/ “Signals at Sea,” a poem by Annie Dil­lard built of pas­sages from Cugle’s Prac­ti­cal Nav­i­ga­tion and pub­lished in Morn­ings Like This:

(If the flags in A’s hoist cannot be made out,
B keeps her answer­ing pen­nant at the “Dip”
and hoists the signal “OWL” or “WCX.”)

CXL Do not aban­don me.
A I am under­go­ing a speed trial.
D Keep clear of me - I am maneu­ver­ing
with dif­fi­culty.
F I am dis­abled. Com­mu­ni­cate with me.
G I require a pilot.

P Your lights are out, or burn­ing badly.
U You are stand­ing into danger.
X Stop car­ry­ing out your inten­tions.
K You should stop your vessel instantly.
L You should stop. I have some­thing
impor­tant to communicate.

R You may feel your way past me.

2/ “ROMEO AND JULIET,” a poem by Hannah Weiner built of pas­sages from the Inter­na­tional Code of Sig­nals and pub­lished in The Code Poems (now avail­able in Hannah Weiner’s Open House, a new selec­tion of her poems edited by Patrick Durgin):

MFD Juliet: Try to enter
KZU Romeo: I am in dif­fi­cul­ties; direct me how to steer
OOX Juliet: You should swing and enter stern first
HBK Romeo: What is the nature of the bottom or what kind of bottom have you?
HAY Juliet: Double bottom
FHR Romeo: Stern way. Going astern
LK Juliet: Go astern easy. Easy astern
ODI Romeo: I am going full speed
HC Juliet: It is not safe to go so fast
KZY Romeo: It is dif­fi­cult to extri­cate
BK Juliet: Is any­thing the matter
VLA Romeo: Cock broken or dam­aged
EHR Juliet: What do the cost of repairs amount to?
DF Romeo: With some assis­tance I shall be able to set things to rights

1/ From “Late and Soon,” Dan Chiasson’s review of Robert Hass and Mark Strand in this week’s New Yorker:

The zero-​sum fluc­tu­a­tions of Hass’s mate­r­ial, some intel­lect fol­lowed by some feel­ing, cool­ness here, warmth there, at times become a formula—more a recipe for soup than soup—but at other times yield work that, exquis­itely recep­tive to actual hap­pi­ness, has opened up new ter­ri­tory for the per­sonal poem.

2/ From “The Cat Went out for Good,” Charles Simic’s much-​lamented review of Robert Creeley’s Col­lected Poems:

The aes­thetic theory—and there is always a theory behind such reduc­tive views—may sound per­sua­sive, but it was fool­ish on Creeley’s part to believe that it could ever val­i­date a poem. If poet­ics were like cook­ing and one could write down a recipe for all of one’s future poems, that would be true. How­ever, great cooks rarely bother to con­sult cookbooks.

2.5/ A bonus View, from Chi­as­son again:

Being a poet doesn’t help you cook a meal or bathe your three-year-old daughter…

1/ From Don Share’s post at Har­riet, the Poetry Foundation’s blog, refer­ring to an arti­cle by Richard Rorty that appears in the new issue of Poetry:

Rorty knew he was dying from pan­cre­atic cancer at the time he was work­ing on the piece. When asked by his son whether the read­ing or writ­ing of phi­los­o­phy gave him any com­fort, he said, surprisingly… no: “neither the phi­los­o­phy I had writ­ten nor that which I had read seemed to have any par­tic­u­lar bear­ing on my situation.” “Hasn’t any­thing you’ve read been of any use?” his son per­sisted. “Yes,” Rorty reports blurt­ing out, “poetry.” He explained:

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