For “Space Fans and Poetry Lovers”

Jupiter – Twice as massive as all other planets put together.

How exciting is this?!! A poem inscribed on the spaceship Europa Clipper, is being sent by NASA this October 2024 to Europa, the second moon of Jupiter. Ada Limon, currently the Poet Laureate of the United States, is the author of the poem, titled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem to Europa.” Admittedly, it’s not the kind of poem I would normally file among my favorites, because it names large abstractions – beauty, grief, pleasure. love – and abstractions seldom evoke the senses, a requirement which defines poetry. But reading the poem over several times in the last few weeks, I’ve warmed to it. I’ve come to the conclusion that if a poem ever deserves to be big – I mean Big – it is one that’s going to represent human beings across 500 miles of space, and one that is going to look out on the largest planet in our solar system in order to make a connection. That connection is made most effectively, I think, by the way Limon shares a small moment or two of life here on Earth – moments like a songbird “singing / its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.” Here is the poem:

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa

Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.

Europa, Jupiter’s 2nd Moon

If you’re a teacher or a writer hoping to encourage a love of poetry, you can hear Limon read it aloud at this link. And take time to notice on the same web page a link to a project called “Join the Message in a Bottle Campaign.” Consider having students sign their name to the poem before it’s sent “to call out through the dark.” I imagine that would thrill many students, to know their name would be carried into space. If you’re working with older children, a bit of time spent trying to understand the poem – its belief in wonder, its belief in mystery – would set those children up for what I think is the most intriguing and wonderful thing about poetry: the fact that it doesn’t necessarily answer questions, it indirectly asks them. Even a science unit, linking poetry to science, would help students understand how closely aligned science and poetry are – both of them ask questions and try to understand our world. The mission to Europa aims to answer questions about its inhabitability, and about the ocean that scientists strongly believe lies below it’s icy crust. This wonderful link allows you to see scientists working on the spacecraft and to hear their explanation for why they want to know more about Europa. It’s all about “the offering of water.”

Another link to introduce yourself to Ada Limon’s work in general can be found at this site, sponsored by the Library of Congress. Ron Charles, book critic for the Washington Post, interviews her, and she reads several of her poems. I often think her work sounds like lovely prose rather than poetry, but the words are open and honest and from the heart, and they’re sprinkled with evocative small moments, just like the poem she created for the spacecraft.

Hope you enjoy my little Rave for poetry this week. And for mysteries, moons, planets, scientists, the dark, etc. One last thought: Just look how tiny we are.

Julie Larios

Relative Size and Distance from the Sun