Richard Feynman wrote this, and I love it!
“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.”
~Richard Feynman
[ad]: Book: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
I admit it, I have misunderstood Richard Feynman since I read that quote of his about poetry – Feynman’s monologue on the beauty of Science: “A poet once said, ‘The whole universe is in a glass of wine.’ We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.”
And so, Feynman, you propose the idea that poets “do not write to be understood,” yet you seem to agree completely with what your quoted poet wrote. I don’t suppose you sense an ever so slight contradiction here…
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Yes, I took offense to Feynman’s concept of what poets write, and that was before I understood that Feynman’s been dead since 1988, so I got a nice double shot of embarrassment and humility.
“Achieve failure, then do four more.” Or, “Keep pushing until you fail.”
“I worry I might never solve a big problem in my life.”
A student once wrote this to Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
Feynman’s answer?
He talked about working on “humble” problems—like folding paper into toys, designing neutron counters, or exploring shock waves—things that might seem small to others.
And then he said something legendary:
“No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”
Mic drop.
“So if you’re sitting there doubting your worth because you’re not “changing the world” in one go—pause.
Solve the small problems. Tinker. Explore. Experiment. They matter more than you think.
Because the size of the problem doesn’t define your value. What you do with it does.”
“After a few minutes, Richard Feynman had worked out the process of spontaneous emission, which is what Stephen Hawking became famous for a year later.”
That darn Feynman anyway. A pure genius, to be sure. And I love some of these quotes of his. Why did he have to say that about a poem holding the line “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” He said, “We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood.”
I mean, how could Feynman say that in all honesty? Even I know that poets write to be understood on the next level, but they desire to be understood on that level nonetheless.
For poetry isn’t quantum physics, it’s words in a language we all understand, usually dealing with perceptions and emotions we’ve all experienced from time to time. What the poet does, essentially, is share his or her in depth of experience on an often common theme, giving us a different, deeper, richer perspective on that theme, and occasionally, on ourselves.
I feel that a poet attempts to bring art and grace into the experiences of the commonplace. Was Feynman such an uppity scholar that he failed to recognize the beauty of a poet’s attempt at showing substance and hidden depth in the ordinary?
Surely I must be wrong here. Feynman, being light years smarter than I, might have perceived correctly that we might never know exactly what the poet meant in his line, “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” However… being a struggling poet myself at times, I am moved to stand up for the poet, and hell, even defend the poor, creative bastard. How? By potentially embarrassing myself yet again in the presence of Feynman’s ghost.
I mean, Richard Feynman was, after all, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Who the hell am I to question a mind like that? Well, I’ll tell you… I’m from the old America. You know, that America that existed before 45 and 47, that America where you could speak out about anyone or anything without fear of reprisal. Yeah, that America. So I’m simply exercising my constitutional right one more time, before that freedom also slips into the sunset, to be replaced by a madman of a dictator who runs the new America to the models of Russia, China and North Korea.
Anyway, to get downright gnarly about it, I think the poet meant this – the worldly, natural elements found in a glass of wine, upon being enjoyed by the wine drinker, completes a wondrous cycle of combined natural elements that, when taken into the human body, lights its mind with thought and emotion of the drinker’s world that his heart holds while reaching for the stars, magically connecting the tangible with the intangible.
Whew. That’s fairly ugly, I know. But to my point – if we assume for the moment that any of my interpretation is correct, then right there lies your difference in my explanation and the line “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” In this case, the poet captured it so simply, so beautifully.
here is something about poets I found on the interner –
And here are a few of my continuing thoughts on this matter –
Oh, that words consisted of colors
Of shapes, and thoughts, and dreams
But words make poems to hit the heart
And expand the mind, it seems
The words we use most every day
Often seem mechanical
But if they be misunderstood
Their meaning then, tyrannical
The poet does, by gift and grace
Attempt to turn the word
Into the most amazing place
Beyond the blinded herd
I offer then, this humble thought
From a humble poet’s mind
That there is still much to be found
In a simple glass of wine.
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And on the off-chance that you’re still with me here, I take an even bolder (re: stupider) attempt at righting Feynman’s mis-guided ship, by adding a line to that fine poet’s thought –
The whole universe is in a glass of wine.
And the unforgiving mortal truth
is found at the bottom of the bottle.
I think I just heard someone laughing uproariously. Was that you, Feynman?
Steve Hulse
