Scientific American Features Allan Treiman's Scientific Literary Genre
Columbia, MD--March 25, 2022. USRA’s Allan Treiman’s scientific literary genre—the haiku, caught the eye of a reporter from Scientific American and the publication has devoted a spread in the March 2022 issue to the haikus that summarized research results at the Lunar and Planetary Conference in March 2021. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poem-other-worlds-in-haiku/
In 2001, while working on an abstract to summarize how using a small spectrometer could transform student understanding of spectra, Allan wrote this description creating a new literary genre: the science-presentation haiku:
Bright Leaves on a dark sky
Beyond the brilliant rainbow
Vision Fades away.
The haiku is aJapanese poetic form that consists of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Allan’s poem follows that form. But the Haiku is more than that -- It conveys a single moment where the poet suddenly sees or realizes something. In this way of thinking, the haiku is a “lightning bolt—fast, clear, and striking”, and “shows a whole panorama of thought in a single flash." The most essential element of a haiku is capturing a moment as visually as possible. The poems are concrete but the imagery can be abstract.
The Haiku had become so popular that Allan created a contest at Lunar and Planetary Science Conference inviting participants to write haikus about the abstracts they submitted. While most of LPSC haiku abstracts are less literary, they have become a popular new genre created by Allan.
Panorama: This view of Mars's Teal Ridge was captured by NASA's Curiosity rover in 2019. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSAllan's haikus have been published here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poem-other-worlds-in-haiku/ and in the Wall Street Journal and in the American Scholar. Haikus About Space/Make Science Less Tedious/So Hope Scientists - WSJ; The American Scholar: Poetry in the Abstract - Christopher Cokinos