Two Cultures Press :: The Sad Science Of Love (2010)

The Sad Science Of Love
Ken Stange
Published by Two Cultures (2010)

“Science, like the speech of the street, is a deep mine of metaphor and understanding. The acceptance of the rhythms and colloquialisms of ‘ordinary’ speech into the realm of poetry has distinguished modern poetry and given it new life. From Whitman down through the Beats and the new rap and dub poets—and the likes of Tom Waits—the startling metaphors and richness of imagery one discovers in casual conversation at the lowdown corner bar has infused new life into poetry—which in the final analysis still deals very much with the same obsessive themes of sex and death. An equally rich source of metaphor and insight is science, but it has been little mined.“
––from the Introduction

Two Cultures Press (2010)
ISBN: 978-0-9809273-3-7
Softcover (6x9 inches) 96 pages
Personalized signed first edition: $20

Downloadable PDF Book
(96 pages plus original cover): $3

More Than Ample (2009)

Excerpt

The Science of Love: Difficilia Quae Pulchra

“Beauty is difficult, a hard science.”
—Hippokrites

Gravity has nothing on them:
the lovers.
.
No apple falling or any Newton .   watching
even begins   .   to know   .   the meaning
of attraction.
.
Often called chemistry,
it's real-   .   -ly all pure
.
physics and math:
strange attractors
and the fifth
fundamental force
which no one wants .   to admit.
.
There is   .   action at a distance.
And there is a stronger than strong force,
more elementary than any corporeal particle.
.
Ask him.
He will tell you—
.

The corners of her mouth . form an acute angle of desire not found in any geometry.

Her supple neck is a lonely Mobius highway . to be cruised forever with his tongue.

The curves of her inner thighs are fluid dynamics . inexplicable and entirely empirical.

Her dark wet cunt is a mysterious singularity . darkly defying both space and time.
.
He will tell you he lives at the event horizon—
frozen in a forever falling to her dark star.
.
Physics is hard,
a hard master:
always demanding
elegance.
.
Like beauty it is simultaneous-
ly
difficult and simple.
.
Like love.