Ambiguity As Fuel

Through his work as a scientist and as a creative writer Stewart has been encouraging his fellow scientists and students to become more comfortable and accepting of the use of metaphors, analogies, and similes. And he encourages poets to not be shy and to drill down into scientific topics to see what they might discover to write about. Who says either side of the preconceived cultural divide should have an exclusive claim, whether analyzing evidence for existence of the Higgs boson or wondering why a lover is being fickle?

In his first three poetry collections, Stewart addressed interrelated themes. First, he considered how scientists, in becoming more familiar with poetry, could improve how they communicate science to the public. He next explored the idea that respect, truth, and sincerity in science and in daily life are essential ingredients in advancing science, in particular because of their importance in science education. In the third collection, Stewart looked at how science education itself is an integral aspect of science: Science stems from personal experience and is transferred in part to the next generation of scientists through parents, science mentors, and teachers.

In “The Ghost in the Word,” Stewart’s central idea is to remind scientists and poets that ambiguity can be a powerful driving force.

Ambiguity is the lifeblood and basis of both science and poetry, Stewart explains. Science is pushing forward in multiple directions at an increasing speed, and the leading edges of these progressions are entering new territories of the unknown, the guessed-at, and the not-understood, evolving as they go. Ambiguity is what these leading edges find and is what fuels them. In science and in poetry, big things start from ambiguous little things bumping into each other.

Throughout the 60 poems in this book, Stewart touches on his real-life influences, or “ghosts.” Key among them is his diagnosis and, knock on wood, cure of prostate cancer by radiation treatment.

Cancer is scary, Stewart says, generating unmitigated ambiguity aplenty. “Cancer can push an individual to think hard about scientific things such as physiology, genetics, medical technologies, risk assessment, and statistics.”

Stewart rarely makes science the focus of his poems. That would seem forced and uncomfortable, too analytical. Rather, he cleverly leaves the science as a platform for the poems or as a thread running through them. The focus tends to be on the personal insight he takes away from the emotive moment, or what social impact the insight might conjure up.

For example, he begins one poem asking a question, “How big is a proton?” The train of thought evolves to the conclusion that people really just don’t know how much we don’t know. In another poem, he dwells on how scientists stitched spider genes into silkworms to make a new type of silk, not for making kimonos but for making bulletproof vests. Throughout the collection, as he had hoped, Stewart uses a little ambiguity to hook thoughts together in provocative ways.

Stewart’s writing serves to remind scientists that we need to open our minds to a broader worldview as we go about our daily work. Creative writing and doing science aren’t easy. If they were, everybody would be doing them. For anyone who is unwilling or unable to engage in one or the other of these endeavors, Stewart’s book offers a way to fill in the gaps. If you haven’t read any poetry in a while, maybe since you had to in high school, Stewart’s latest collection is a good place to get reacquainted.