Across The Universe
The Genesis of the Poems + Their Soundtracks 🎶
The genesis of the poem: I was watching a YouTube video of Professor Brian Cox explaining the Fermi paradox and found myself fascinated by it. There was a lot of discussion about probabilities, the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and the question of why we have found no evidence of contact with such advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. He also mentioned “400 billion suns,” which felt like a beautiful phrase.
I began to think about probability in another way, about meeting someone who feels inevitable. Someone who makes you feel as if you’ve been waiting for them your whole life, as if every path you’ve ever taken has led you to the exact moment you finally meet. What are the chances of that?
And is love possible, even if it’s not probable?
The song was an obvious choice from the start. I had it in mind the whole time.
The genesis of the poem: I’m rereading Childhood’s End at the moment, so I think it’s woven into every poem in this post to some extent, but this one was directly inspired by it.
The idea of a utopia was mentioned, and it made me wonder what such a place would actually be and look like.
The title of the poem, Efflorescence, is a word I really like, and I thought it fit perfectly because one of its figurative meanings is the peak or culmination of a development, in this case, the development of the human race.
As for the song, it’s one of my favorites. It speaks of a love that is older and more certain than time itself. I thought it would provide the perfect contrast to the poem and raise the question of what we truly need to preserve, and what kind of utopia we want to build.
The genesis of the poem: In this case, I started with Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, a song I return to often and one that could almost be considered a small philosophical thesis, with its incredible and ever-relevant lyrics.
It was especially the ending—“And I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’, but I’ll know my song well before I start singin’”—that made me grab my pen and immediately write this poem.
So, thank you, Bob, once again for the inspiration. I’m sure it won’t be the last time. ;)
The genesis of the poem: This one was, of course, inspired by the times we live in and the feeling that we’re inevitably heading toward a doomsday scenario of one kind or another.
And if we are, how is it possible that we don’t get to do all the things we wanted to do? In this case, I wrote about a kiss, that final longing for a love that never happened, but it could really be anything.
It’s about humanity as a whole. What if it all ends before we fulfill our true potential, and what a shame that would be.
As for the song choice and the reason behind it, I’ll let you guess and simply post the lyrics here:
Let’s not make it into a big thing
Let’s not get lost in this
I know it is, I know we could
I guess we surely would
Let’s pretend it’s not
It doesn’t mean a thing
Let’s not blow it out of all senses
As though it meant so much
It’s always thought about for weeks
Not everytime your lips meet mine, I think of her
But when her hands reach out, I think of you
The genesis of the poem: Every Cure fan will recognize that I made this poem using song titles from their catalog. To everyone else, it might sound a little silly. :)
I enjoy making poems out of song titles, it’s a lot of fun. I’ve also done it with titles by The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and The Strokes.
More to come. ;)
The genesis of the poem: This is one of those poems where I think I’m being clever, or funny, or both—but it’s probably neither. ;)
The title came to me first, and then a few lines of the poem followed, much the way many of my lines do: by waking me up in the middle of the night. (I keep a notebook by my pillow to write these things down, and when I wake up in the morning, I never know what I’m going to find there because I don’t remember writing any of it. Sometimes I’m shocked by how good the lines can be, and sometimes I can’t read them at all because of my terrible handwriting and because it was dark when I wrote them.)
Anyway, I’m trying to say that I have no idea what I’m doing, and there is no secret recipe.
The song pairing is there because of the opening lyrics, which go:
‘‘If I could write I'd set all the words free to follow you
Tell you wonder, tell you secrets and solitude’’
Journey to the End of the Fright
By Eve Zennarrow
Was sitting next to Nothing,
and Time was on my side.
Nothing lasted forever.
Time waited for no one.
If I’ve got Nothing to lose,
till the last stop I will dwell.
Was it for All or Nothing?
Only Time will tell.
The genesis of the poem: Some of the recurring themes in my poems are Nothing and Time.
How can there be such a thing as nothing? What is nothing? How do you describe something that isn’t, and doesn’t that contradict the definition itself?
And time... well, I don’t have enough time to torture you with all my musings on that incomprehensible topic.
So I put it into rhyme. Everything seems less absurd when it rhymes.;)
The title is, of course, a play on Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, and it means that if we ever solved the mysteries of Time and Nothingness, we would no longer be afraid.
The song choice is a new Modest Mouse song that I was listening to when I came up with these couplets, so I felt I owed it to the song to pair it with the poem. It’s a great song, check it out.
Thanks for reading. This publication will always remain free. If you’d like to support my work, consider sharing, subscribing, or ordering my poetry book with a soundtrack, Brave New Chord.
Best,
Eve
like browsing a record store and poetry section at the same time
Wonderful, Eve! I love where the breadcrumbs led.