poetry-3
Explanation
In this comic, a person (appearing to be a scientist or academic) is giving a presentation. They say: "People think the humanities don't help with science, but while reading poetry I find the perfect opening if you want to hate on selenologists."
They then display a passage from "Eleven Addresses to the Lord" by John Berryman, which reads:
"Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,
inimitable contriver,
Endower of Earth so gorgeous & different
from the boring Moon,"
The joke is that this person has found a use for poetry in science -- but not the kind of interdisciplinary enrichment that humanities advocates typically envision. Instead of poetry inspiring scientific wonder or providing metaphorical frameworks for understanding nature, this scientist has found that a famous poem by John Berryman happens to contain a sick burn against the Moon, calling it "boring" in comparison to Earth. They want to weaponize this poetic passage as ammunition in academic rivalries, specifically to mock selenologists (scientists who study the Moon).
The humor operates on several levels. First, it subverts the earnest argument that the humanities and sciences should complement each other by showing the most petty possible version of interdisciplinary collaboration. Second, it plays on the real academic rivalries and hierarchies between different scientific fields. Selenology (lunar science) is a real discipline, and the joke implies that other scientists look down on it as studying something inherently less interesting than Earth.
John Berryman (1914-1972) was a major American poet, and "Eleven Addresses to the Lord" is a real poem from his collection "Love & Fame" (1970). The quoted passage is genuine -- Berryman really did call the Moon "boring" in a poem addressed to God, praising the Creator's work on Earth while dismissing the Moon as comparatively dull. The comic finds humor in the idea that this throwaway line in a devotional poem could be repurposed as scientific trash talk centuries later.