Publisher's Synopsis
This volume combines for the first time John Dickey's epic 49 canto Earth: A Narrative in Verse (updated for this volume with 5 new cantos), with his 23 poem composition The Solar System: A Tour in Verse.
From the formation of the solar system, 4.6 billion years ago, to the fate of the Sun as a fading white dwarf, six billion years from today, Earth: A Narrative in Verse recounts the epic of Earth's evolution in 49 cantos that document the struggle of irrepressible Life with Inevitable Death. Astronomy, geology and biology are melded in poems that employ and celebrate the sounds and symbols of science to describe the formation of planets, tectonic motions, climate change, catastrophic happenings, and the odyssey of terrestrial Life from single cells to complex organisms and finally back to single cells, the last earthlings. Sobering yet uplifting, the work presents Earth in the context of universal time and space.
The verses of The Solar System: A Tour in Verse visit the Sun, the planets, their moons and other celestial bodies inhabitting our solar system. These poems are offered as a celebration of the achievements of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century scientists, engineers, technicians and astronauts who ventured into space and transformed our knowledge of the solar system.
