Doctor Marie Curie, Women of Substance and Poetry

Here is a video of amazing poems about science and the environment being read by poets and artists. It's from Maria Popova who curates the inspirational and thought provoking Brain Pickings and the Academy of American Poetswho bring us Poem a Day. Turn it on while you cook or spring clean. I found it uplifting and hopeful. "Not only does poetry matter, poetry is matter." 

One other thought... The poem about Marie Curie takes me back to grade school, to an assignment to write a report on a scientist. I landed on Madame Curie ---->. I'm sure I did the least to get it done as I often did in school, but it's stayed with me. It gave me a view of an accomplished woman in a world dominated by men. I remember my mother helping me with this particular assignment. She may have been the one who pointed me toward Madame Curie. She drove me to the library on the Hill to do the research and made editing suggestions sitting with me at the kitchen table. All of this was highly unusual behavior for her, as she was not the role model for the helicopter parent I became. Madame Curie must have been my mom's hero, this assignment engaged her. I think too, that it was her mild way of pointing me to becoming a woman of substance. My mother was a woman of substance who, though graduating from college at 20 years old, gave up her career at twenty-seven to marry and live a household life.

Madame Curie, who should be known as Doctor Curie, (another subtle way to suppress her magnitude?) was not only the first woman to win a Nobel prize; she won two Nobel Prizes. In school we learned about martyrs, who died for their faith. Curie died a martyr too, for her science from radiation poisoning... equally as inspiring. This assignment was one of my defining moments. It allowed me to see women in a different way, and, with my mother stepping beyond her usual, allowed me to see the possibilities for me. 

I'm hugely grateful for Brain Pickings and poetry for doing what poetry does.