Stellar

"Stellar, by Minghao Zou, is a unique depiction of the universe in terms of finely rendered poetry. The book draws upon a literary tradition of ancient representation which originated with the Hesiodic Works & Days, where the kosmos was portrayed as an efficient influence upon human effort. Zou also models his poem in the style of pre-Copernican Dante, who, in his Commedia, travelled the kosmos in both a vertical and metaphorical fashion. The visionary worlds of William Blake are similarly intrinsic to this poetic tradition where the heavens and their supernatural agencies inhabit and dramatise the lines of the poet." ~Kevin McGrath, Harvard University.

Stellar is a book about the intellectual beauty of the kosmos and the marriage of heaven and earth. This union is accomplished through narrative which depicts a journey that we embark upon in the heavens, and how we have become ostracised from that domain and fallen into a terrestrial realm. The book illustrates our metaphorical passage through this world and how "she" eventually restores us to a universal feast or reunion. She accomplishes this harvest via the medium of agriculture and its laborious practices. Intellectual beauty is what she represents in this poetry and this is a condition which can only be apprehended by the emotional self or, that which intrinsically connects the inspiration, experience, and passions of humanity. The "we" of the poetry presents both the idea of the reader and of a poetic character: how it is that intellectual beauty manifests itself in us as moral agents. The metaphor of the kosmos is a candid medium through and by which all things are related, transmitted, or reticulated. These are composed of the fabrics of time and space and the atomic elements which bear the structure of this universal grandeur: stars, nebulae, galaxies, including the most bizarre mysteries of this conception. Beauty can be described in different forms, but in terms of universal commonality it concerns human affect and kindness; it is a medium of empathy and resonance, where individual beings-including the reader-might join each other emotionally or, with the entire unity of the kosmos.

Stellar is a book for all astronomy-lovers.