| Phases | Original collection | Year of publication | Poems |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early | Death of a Naturalist | 1966 | "Digging", "Death of a Naturalist", "The Barn", "Blackberry-Picking", "Churning Day", "Follower", "Mid-Term Break", "The Diviner", "Poem", "Personal Helicon" |
| Door into the Dark | 1969 | "The Outlaw", "The Forge", "Thatcher", "The Peninsula", "Requiem for the Croppies", "Undine", "The Wife's Tale", "Night Drive", "Relic of Memory", "A Lough Neagh Sequence", "The Given Note", "Whinlands", "The Plantation", "Bann Clay", "Bogland" | |
| Wintering Out | 1972 | "Fodder", "Bog Oak", "Anahorish", "Servant Boy", "Land", "Gifts of Rain", "Toome", "Broagh", "Oracle", "The Backward Look", "A New Song", "The Other Side", "Tinder" (from "A Northern Hoard"), "The Tollund Man", "Nerthus", "Wedding Day", "Mother of the Groom", "Summer Home", "Serenades", "Shore Woman", "Limbo", "Bye-Child", "Good-night", "Fireside", "Westering" | |
| Middle | Stations | 1975 | "Nesting-Ground", "July", "England's Difficulty", "Visitant", "Trial Runs", "The Wanderer", "Cloistered", "The Stations of the West", "Incertus" |
| North | 1975 | "Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication" ("Sunlight", "The Seed Cutters"), "Funeral Rites", "North", "Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces", "Bone Dreams", "Bog Queen", "The Grauballe Man", "Punishment", "Strange Fruit", "Kinship", "Act of Union", "Hercules and Anataeus", "Whatever You Say Say Nothing" (Excerpt), "Singing School" ("The Ministry of Fear", "A Constable Calls", "Orange Drums, Tyrone, 1966", "Summer 1969", "Fosterage", "Exposure") | |
| Field Work | 1979 | "Oysters", "Triptych" ("After a Killing", "Sibyl", "At the Water's Edge"), "The Toome Road", "A Drink of Water", "The Strand at Lough Beg", "Casualty", "Badgers", "The Singer's House", "The Guttural Muse", "Glanmore Sonnets", "An Afterwards", "The Otter", "The Skunk", "A Dream of Jealousy", "Field Work", "Song", "Leavings", "The Harvest Bow", "In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge", "Ugolino" | |
| Station Island | 1984 | "The Underground", "Sloe Gin", "Chekhov on Sakhalin", "Sandstone Keepsake", "Shelf Life" ("Granite Cup", "Old Smoothing Iron", "Stone from Delphi"), "Making Strange", "The Birthplace", "Changes", "A Bat on the Road", "A Hazel Stick for Catherine Ann", "A Kite for Michael and Christopher", "The Railway Children", "Widgeon", "Sheelagh na Gig", "The Loaning" ("Aye"), "The King of the Ditchbacks", "Station Island", "Sweeney Redivivus" ("The First Gloss", "Sweeney Redivivus", "In the Beech", "The First Kingdom", "The First Flight", "Drifting Off", "The Cleric", "The Hermit", "The Master", "The Scribes", "Holly", "An Artist", "The Old Icons", "In Illo Tempore", "On the Road") | |
| The Haw Lantern | 1987 | "For Bernard and Jane McCabe", "Alphabets", "Terminus", "From the Frontier of Writing", "The Haw Lantern", "From the Republic of Conscience", "Hailstones", "The Stone Verdict", "The Spoonbait", "Clearances", "The Milk Factory", "The Wishing Tree", "Grotus and Coventina", "Wolfe Tone", "From the Canton of Expectation", "The Mud Vision", "The Disappearing Island", "The Riddle" | |
| Late | Seeing Things | 1991 | "The Golden Bough", "Markings", "Man and Boy", "Seeing Things", "An August Night", "Field of Vision", "The Pitchfork", "The Settle Bed", "Glanmore Revisited" (Excerpt), "A Pillowed Head", "A Royal Prospect", "Wheels within Wheels", "Fosterling", "Squarings" ("Lightenings", "Settings", "Crossings", "Squarings") |
| The Spirit Level | 1996 | "The Rain Stick", "Mint", "A Sofa in the Forties", "Keeping Going", "Two Lorries", "Damson", "Weighing In", "St Kevin and the Blackbird", "The Flight Path" (Excerpt), "Mycenae Lookout", "The Gravel Walks", "Whitby-sur-Moyola", "Poet's Chair", "The Swing", "Two Stick Drawings", "A Call", "The Errand", "A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also", "The Strand", "The Walk", "At the Wellhead", "At Banagher", "Tollund", "Postscript" | |
| Uncollected | "Anataeus" (1966), "The Names of the Hare" (1981), "Villanelle for an Anniversary" (1986), "A Transgression" (1994) | ||
| Translations | Sweeney Astray (Excerpt, 1983), The Cure at Troy (Excerpt, 1990) | ||
| Prose | Crediting Poetry (1995 Nobel Prize lecture) | ||
Context
editIt was written with the intent of explaining key concepts of physics to the average reader. All chapters in the book are expanded versions of articles Rovelli wrote in the Sunday supplement of the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.[1]
Contents
editThe book is sectioned into seven chapters, each covering a topic within the field of modern physics.
| No. | Chapter | Main topic(s) | Subsidiary topics |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Most Beautiful of Theories | General relativity | Albert Einstein, Annalen der Physik |
| 2 | The Quanta | Quantum mechanics | Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg |
| 3 | The Architecture of the Cosmos | Astronomy | |
| 4 | Particles | Elementary particles | |
| 5 | Grains of Space | Quantum gravity | |
| 6 | Probability, Time and the Heat of Black Holes | Probability, black holes | |
| 7 | Ourselves | Human purpose |
Reception
edit- ^ Russell, Anna (2016-03-01). "Carlo Rovelli's Poetic Contemplation of Physics". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
- ^ Davis, Nicola (2015-10-11). "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli review – a curious paean to science". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
- ^ Garner, Dwight (2016-03-22). "Review: 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' Is Long on Knowledge". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
- ^ Cossins, Daniel. "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics is lean, lucid and enchanting". New Scientist. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
- ^ Moskowitz, Clara (2016). "Book Review: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics". Scientific American. 314 (3): 72. Bibcode:2016SciAm.314V..72M. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0316-72d. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
- ^ Lezard, Nicholas (2016-07-05). "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics review – science without the detail". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
- ^ Hawcock, Neville (2015-10-23). "'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics', by Carlo Rovelli". Financial Times. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
- ^ "SEVEN BRIEF LESSONS ON PHYSICS". Kirkus Reviews. December 15, 2015. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
- ^ Vignieri, Sacha (2016). Rovelli, Carlo (ed.). "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics". Science. 354 (6317): 1229. ISSN 0036-8075. JSTOR 44711161.
- ^ Brooks, Michael (2015-10-09). "Poetry in perpetual motion". New Statesman. 144 (5283): 49.