The University of Arizona Press
October 20, 2020
Christopher Cokinos, co-editor of Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight, reveled in science’s recent discovered of phospine in the clouds of Venus, a sign that may signal life in a recent Op-Ed published by the Los Angeles Times.
From the op-ed:
“It means that life arose more than once in our backwater solar system. It means that life is common, and its tenacity is cosmic. For me, that puts our struggles in a grand context. Not by way of diminishing the hard work of problem-solving that faces us. Rather, the possibility that swaths of airborne microbes are going about their business in the skies above Venus reminds me that life finds a way. We can find our way too.”
Read the entire op-ed here.
Beyond Earth’s Edge, co-edited by Cokinos and Julie Swarstad Johnson (Editor), Christopher Cokinos, is a trailblazing anthology of poetry that spans from the dawn of the space age to the imagined futures of the universe. The anthology offers a fascinating record of both national mindsets and private perspectives as poets grapple with the promise and peril of U.S. space exploration across decades and into the present.
