Tidal Song: A Dirge for Earth
Camila Ring
Ohio Writer
Source Material:
The source text for this poem are the last two pages of Italo Calvino's 1965 short story "The Distance of the Moon," which is from his collection Cosmicomics. The collection presents comical reimaginings of the formative years of the universe; “The Distance of the Moon” specifically uses an apocryphal scientific hypothesis to reimagine a time when the Moon was so close to the Earth that inhabitants of Earth could basically fling themselves onto it.
Additional Context:
It was interesting for me to notice that the poem which emerged from this text seems a reversal of the trajectory of Calvino’s imagination--as if looking to a future rather than past cosmos.
The source text for this poem are the last two pages of Italo Calvino's 1965 short story "The Distance of the Moon," which is from his collection Cosmicomics. The collection presents comical reimaginings of the formative years of the universe; “The Distance of the Moon” specifically uses an apocryphal scientific hypothesis to reimagine a time when the Moon was so close to the Earth that inhabitants of Earth could basically fling themselves onto it.
Additional Context:
It was interesting for me to notice that the poem which emerged from this text seems a reversal of the trajectory of Calvino’s imagination--as if looking to a future rather than past cosmos.
Camila Ring is a PhD candidate in English at Case Western Reserve University, where her research focuses on poetic innovation as a form of theological inquiry. Her poems have been published in Colorado Review, The Windhover, Bathhouse, and elsewhere, and her scholarly work has been published in English Literary History.
