The Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2011

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Soundtrack

In its entirety, the poem is the soundtrack of all time and space. Smith frames the poem as the soundtrack of a film, though, and not a music album. This is an important distinction. Smith wants readers to come to the poem with a basic understanding of the progression of the universe from the Big Bang to the eventual death of everything. With this knowledge in mind, readers can read the poem as the music to a film they’ve already seen.

By focusing on a soundtrack, Smith allows the poem to follow a traditional narrative structure without truly having a plot. The poem has no characters or real story, but it still has a beginning, middle, and an end. When it overlaps with the narrative of the universe’s existence, the music makes sense.

Smith uses this structure so she can place the poem in the domain of metaphor, and so she can invoke unique sensory feelings with the use of sound. If she were to write the poem as the visual narrative of the universe, she’d be telling the story in a comparable way that people have already seen it. By focusing on a symbolic retelling through music, Smith crafts an exceptionally unique poem and adopts a fresh perspective. The soundtrack is simply the vehicle for Smith’s unique poetic voice and approach.

The Metaphors

The poem features a number of isolated metaphors and similes that help tell the broader story. While these are literary devices, they are also—in this context—used as symbols in Smith’s poem.

The first simile is in the second stanza: “Then something like cellophane / Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe” (Lines 3-4). Smith uses this comparison to show the sounds of the early universe coming together, including the forming of planets and galaxies. The sound is harsh and disquieting, suggesting the violence of the early universe.

In the third stanza, Smith uses another next simile: “What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings / In molasses” (Lines 5-6). As discussed above, this comparison refers to the rise and fall of life and its inability to escape its own small bit of time in the vastness of the universe’s life.

Next, Smith uses a series of similes to describe mankind’s attempts to conquer the universe: “So much for the flags we bored // Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire / And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame” (Lines 6-8). These images focus on the space race of the 20th century and its lingering effects into the 21st century. Ultimately, humanity’s attempts to leave Earth are almost meaningless.

Finally, Smith uses a simile and a metaphor in the penultimate stanza: “The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming, / Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns” (Lines 9-10). The simile here is complicated. Smith is picturing the sound of the universe like waves. The universe is full of darkness, but when people crack the code of the cosmic microwave background, noise like static interrupts that darkness. Instead of dots of static, this static is stringy like lines of fat in beef because it comes from radiation waves.

The metaphor after the simile imagines the Big Bang’s echo as a chorus of engines, which is a powerful image contrasting the sputtering tin can engine of humanity from earlier in the poem.

Science and Technology

The middle stanzas of the poem introduce humanity’s scientific advances, but Smith has mixed feelings on science and technology. Science allows her speaker to hear the music of the universe, but science can only offer so much. Smith tells readers that humanity must temper its ego. People cannot dominate the universe with manmade technology; technology can and should only be used to appreciate the awesome power of everything that led to human creation and everything that will eventually result in death. In this sense, the poem is both a celebration and a warning.