Personal Readings

There's an old 2-line poem I had remembered for years, the author and title forgotten. Past Googling had failed, but today it popped up. The poem was published in 1962. At that date, everyone knew this key piece of information: We sent chimps into space before we sent people.

Dawn of the Space Age, by John Ciardi

First a monkey, then a man,
Just the way the world began.

The poem is mentioned in an essay on poems about space exploration. It's buried deep in this pdf file from Nasa. The author of essay described the emotional tone of this couplet as "wry and cynical humor."

I agree there's humor, but I don't hear wry or cynical here. What I hear is a comparison of space flight with human evolution, and I find it inspiring. That's why I carried the couplet in memory all these years. Perhaps I'm reading more into it than the author intended. But I doubt Ciardi would have minded.

Within the bounds of reason
You make a poem your own,
Polishing the meaning
Like a stolen precious stone.