Dear Ms. Marie Howe,
My name is Olivia and I am a freshman at the High School for Math, Science and Engineering at the City College of New York. I have a passion for poetry and I find that when I read and write poetry it feels almost exactly the same as the free expression and liberation of self that comes with displaying an art form, like dance or music. I am always struck with awe at the fact that poems are multidimensional. They have a first impression, and then many underlying thoughts just waiting to be uncovered. The whole poem is so much more than the first read through. But when I read your poem, “Singularity”, for the first time, I was attached. Your words grabbed me hook, line, and sinker. It was probably one of the first times that I felt uplifted during the pandemic. Your poem talks about being singular, alone, yet feeling so whole inside. I read your poem when I was alone in my home, no companionship, when I felt anything but whole inside.
The first line of your poem says, “Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were?” This line is a question we all ask ourselves, it is a universal experience of wanting to go back to simpler times. I want to go back to the time when I joked around with my friends at lunch and made them smile, yet now the only time I even hear a fragment of their voices is when they echo across the empty void of cyberspace. In your poem you talk about how togetherness provides love and support. How can we feel loved and supported if the only time we interact is during our once-a-week video chat, hiding our pixelated expressions behind our lonesome screens? In your poem, you talk a lot about how being connected is more nurturing than being alone. I believe that humanity has just become one massive mechanism, cold and calculating. Humans have not become immune to emotion, but rather numb to it by now, with all of the hate and the lies and the reckless behavior on social platforms of adults and youth alike. We have become seemingly connected, but actually our sources of technological connection have become a great hindrance to the way humans connect socially. When humanity connects, we are supposed to feel emotion. Emotion makes us human and the only way to claim our individuality back is to recognize what human connection is. Everything used to flow together in harmony as one, when “we were ocean and before that to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was liquid and stars were space,” as stated in your poem. When you read your poem aloud, a peaceful silence settled within me. Your poem is almost mourning what once was, but when I heard you say your poem, I felt like I wanted to smile and cry at the same time. The way you conveyed how humans talk with nature and how we interact with each other was not only true, your poem was one of the most relevant texts that I have heard for a long time. Global Warming is an issue all around the world and so is the bleaching of our oceans and the poaching of our species for their valuable resources. I believe that humanity has not been aware of our impacts on our environments and how we access our valuables and augment the world for ourselves in selfish ways. In your poem, it talks about waking up to what we were. Waking up is not just the act of rousing oneself from sleep but the act of clearing our blurry, groggy minds and perceiving the world with an open one. Your poem exalts these virtues, saying that when we were together and awake, we would connect with each other and the world in the most pure, human way. Your poem states, “No I, no we, no one, no was, no verb, no noun,” bringing clarity to the fact that all of what makes us different and separates us into our own different categories are our own human constructs. I wish humankind would find the possibility in our species, and the hope in the “tiny tiny dot brimming with is is is is is”. We could understand how similar we really are to each other and instead of accentuating our differences, we could realize that being a united whole means recognizing the one thing we have in common during the most joyous or darkest of times: our humanity.
I would like to say that the meaningful way you aligned this poem with the universe, the future, and life itself was not lost on me. Apart from being alone or singular, the word singularity also is an infinitely dense point of matter in space time, also known as the center of a black hole. In the singularity of a black hole, all matter is vacuumed towards the event horizon. It is the most powerful part of the black hole, practically ground zero, a central point where all matter that comes too close to the black hole revolves around. Your poem references humanity as a black hole, that many things revolve around the human race, such as the state of the world right now and the negative consequences of human selfishness. Yet, many positive occasions are reflected by humanity as well, for instance when humans started global conservation efforts to preserve the world or how humans figured out how to reach beyond the sky to the heavens. Singularities are fascinating and very volatile when swallowing up whole solar systems, just like how the human race can disrupt many different natural occurrences, for better or for worse. But, like it or not, I have come to accept that change is a natural occurrence. Another way the word “singularity” can be interpreted is not necessarily the singularity before this turmoil, but also immediately after. Just how human interaction can change based on the advancement of technology, one theory states that there could possibly be a technological singularity in the future, detailing the time in which technological advances could lead to an unforeseeable future in which technology becomes uncontrollably inherent in our future society. Were you intending this kind of interpretation when you wrote the poem? Are you concerned at all about our possible future if readers do not heed your wise words or at least listen and try to understand?
As a final reference to my personal experiences, my childhood was filled with a fascination for the unknown and the complexities of humanity on the whole. I was greatly influenced by astrophysicists and astronomers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, and especially Stephen Hawking and his remarkable findings about black holes. Their words and teachings impacted the person I am today. Your poem brought back to mind the many questions I thought about as a child and still think about as a teenager. Thank you in this time of confusion, misunderstanding, and loneliness for your wise and thoughtful words on humanity. I will read this poem from time to time, or every time I feel lonely, to reflect on my place in the world and my passion to question, believe, connect, feel emotion, understand, and seek joy.
Very sincerely,
Olivia
Grade 9
New York, NY
