Can I talk about poetry without also talking about quantum (or photonics), you may have started to wonder!
Here is an exciting recent update on a Neotribe VC quantum investment:
Google Acquires Atlantic Quantum to Scale Quantum Computing.
And here is a new investment:
Opticore: $7.5 Million Secured For Advancing Photonic Computing Chips.
Repurposing John Keats‘
O for a life of sensation rather than of thoughts!
I have framed Academic Capitalism (as always, taking a Both/And perspective over the Either/Or):
O for a life of monetization rather than just of mathematics!
Indeed, continuing this theme:
O for a life of Academic Philanthropy rather than just of Academic Capitalism!
Why Poetry?
In Poetry as Enchantment, Dana Gioia writes:
The aim of poetry – in this primal and primary sense as enchantment – is to awaken us to a fuller sense of our own humanity in both its social and individual aspects.
Poetry is considered the earliest form of literature, an oral art that pre-existed history, and verse was universally our civilization’s first memory and transmission technology.
Why did I fund Poetry?
I like poetry. And as you know, I am (supposedly) a descendent of the Maitra-Varuni family, through Vashishta, the bard responsible for Mandala 7 of Rig Veda (as well as contributing portions to other Mandalas, notably Mandala 1, attributed to Agastya, the twin brother of Vashishta).
For those looking for a delightful condensed English verse of Ramayana and Mahabharata, I have greatly enjoyed rereading the translations by:
Romesh Chunder Dutt CIE (Bengali: রমেশচন্দ্র দত্ত; 13 August 1848 – 30 November 1909) was an Indian civil servant (Indian Civil Service, circa 1870), economic historian, translator of Ramayana and Mahabharata.
What fund Poetry at CMU?
I am at CMU. First, some history many of you may not know about, because even I didn’t until recently:
Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University is a household name in fields such as computer science, robotics, drama, the arts, and—thanks to its outstanding history of literary publication—poetry.
Initially founded by Gerald Costanzo as Three Rivers Press, Carnegie Mellon University Press (CMUP) has been a major voice in publishing contemporary literature—especially poetry—since 1972.
In 1986, CMUP published Rita Dove’s Thomas and Beulah, making it one of approximately 30 presses in the country to ever produce a Pulitzer Prize-winning book of poetry, and one of the smallest presses to produce a Pulitzer winner in any category. CMUP has served as an early publisher of other future Pulitzer winners (Ted Kooser, Franz Wright, Stephen Dunn, Peter Balakian, Carolyn Kizer), National Book Award winners (Philip Levine, James Tate, Gerald Stern, Jean Valentine, Denis Johnson, Terrance Hayes), and renowned writers like Mary Karr, Cornelius Eady, Sam Hamill, and C.D. Wright. Its output and early identification of major writers is almost unparalleled across the country.
In 2024, CMUP restructured under the leadership of CMU Libraries, enabling this historic literary institution to expand into other areas of print and digital publishing.
Now, to the present:
Jake Grefenstette, CMUP’s new poetry editor, worked with me to conceive a new first book award to continue the Press’s legacy of identifying and supporting emerging talent. The new Tayur Poetry Fund will endow in perpetuity the Tayur Poetry Prize to support the publication of an excellent first book of poetry by CMUP each year.
The Fund will also support the creation of the Oakland Review Poetry Prize for an outstanding single poem published by the student-run Oakland Review, which was founded on campus in 1973.
Both new prizes are geared towards the early recognition of talent and fostering robust student engagement with poetry and literary publication. The first Tayur Poetry Prize and Oakland Review Poetry Prize will be announced in early 2026.
Clearly these prizes are for Living Poets as against:
Dead Poets Society is a 1989 American coming-of-age drama film. The film, starring Robin Williams, is set in 1959 tells the story of an English teacher who inspires his students through his teaching of poetry. It grossed $235.9 million worldwide against a $16.4 million budget.
Something that combined both a Dead and Living poet was this International Poetry Forum event earlier this afternoon:
Sir Andrew Motion, past UK Poet Laureate and acclaimed John Keats biographer, visited Pittsburgh for a reading of his own work alongside the poetry of Keats. The reading took place at Carnegie Lecture Hall of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in Oakland (4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213). This special event was presented by the International Poetry Forum in partnership with Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
An interesting thing he mentioned is that contrary to the received wisdom that Keats was “all about sensuousness” (and an “apolitical priest of beauty”) and not writing about “political suffering of his times”, he believes that, even in To Autumn, we can trace the undercurrents of the latter, for example, in the mention of gleaner (folks who had recently legally lost the ability to pick up the leftovers after the harvest). Really? Seemed to me to be a stretch, but then I found that Dana Gioia, in his review of Andrew Morton’s biography, is even more unconvinced:
British poet and critic Andrew Motion has employed a fascinating but risky gambit to differentiate his huge new biography, Keats, from its predecessors. He presents the poet as a political being whose writing reflects the social currents of his time. Motion’s stated intention is to demonstrate that Keats combined “a political purpose with a poetic ambition, a social search with an aesthetic ideal.” For most writers, such a perspective would seem unobjectionable. For Keats, however, it represents radical revisionism. Traditional scholarship views him as an artist who consciously transcended moral and political ideology to explore the realm of pure imagination. “A Priest of Beauty slain before his time,” exclaimed Oscar Wilde at the poet’s grave in 1877. Wilde and the Aesthetic Movement set the tone for future critics, who have considered Keats the ideal of the apolitical poet.
The irony of Keats is that Motion is above reproach everywhere except in his central thesis. Once politics enters in, the author too often reaches for significant connections that simply are not there. Motion’s analyses of Keats’s poems are uniformly informed, subtle, and enlightening—until the analysis turns ideological. In an otherwise exemplary analysis of “Ode to Autumn,” for instance, Motion suddenly suggests—with no cogent evidence—that the poem alludes to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre of radicals. This may not be the scholarly equivalent of seeing Elvis in a local supermarket, but it comes close enough to be unworthy of the standard Motion sets elsewhere in the book.
Regardless, I could not help re-read Kalidasa’s Ritu-Samhara, especially A Description of the Autumn, that I have always enjoyed, that closes with:
May this season autumn, with a countenance like a full blown lotus, clothed in blossoming Kasa flowers like unto a white raiment, and smiling like lilies, give in profusion joy to your minds.
