TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

It’s funny how we talk about the right brain and the left brain, and about math and science vs. poetry and art. When actually, there is a lot of math in poetry the way there is a lot of math in music. And on the other hand, there is a lot of poetry in science.

You’re listening to this podcast right now, so you’re enjoying the art of poetry thanks to the science of sound and hearing. I think we take all of our senses for granted until they falter. You hardly appreciate your vision until it starts to go. (I say this as someone very nearsighted who’s worn glasses since age nine.) You hardly appreciate your sense of smell, or taste, or hearing until they’re compromised by age, or illness, or injury. And frankly, how much do we know — or remember from biology class — about how these senses are processed by the human body?

I know our hearing involves sound waves and the structures of the ear, but I wouldn’t have been able to explain it in depth or draw you a diagram. So I did a little research, and as I suspected, there is plenty of poetry — by which I mean music and mystery — in the science. Sound waves travel to the eardrum, which vibrates. Those vibrations move to three tiny bones in the middle ear. Those bones amplify the vibrations and send them to a fluid-filled structure called the cochlea.

In the cochlea, the vibrations cause the fluid to ripple, creating a kind of wave. Hair cells ride that wave, and as they move up and down, microscopic hair-like projections, known as stereocilia, bump against an overlying structure, causing them to bend. When they bend, tiny openings at their tips open up, and chemicals rush into the cells, creating an electrical signal. The auditory nerve carries that signal to the brain, which turns it into a sound that we recognize and understand.

It's a complex process with lots of steps. It makes me think of Mouse Trap, the game my sisters and I used to play as kids. It was basically a Rube Goldberg machine — a marble runs down a track and falls into a bucket, which tips over and knocks something else down, and so on. A chain reaction. But isn’t there also so much poetry in the language? Cochlea. Stereocilia. Ripples and waves and signals.

Today’s poem is a beautiful blend of science and art, anatomy and music, bones and bells. It’s a poem that refuses to take the body — and the time we are given in our bodies — for granted.

Scheduling the Bone Scan
by Katie Farris

The word “bone” tolls in your ear,
a bell. What tolls? The word, the bone?

The drum in your ear moves the hammer
like a lever, a bone moves
the word “bone” through your ear.

You repeat “bone,” your voice droning—
not silver: bronze. A duller thud.
Nothing ringing—instead, a buzz—
the devouring sound—the insect, time.

"Scheduling the Bone Scan" by Katie Farris from STANDING IN THE FOREST OF BEING ALIVE © 2023 Katie Farris. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.