Adler poetry reading (c.1977)
A circa 1977 poetry reading attended by noted British poets: Chris Cheek and Bob Cobbing, someone known as B.G., Jeremy Adler (far right)—noted Goethe Elective Affinities reaction scholar—and Steven Smith. [1]
In literature, poetry is the art of using aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language, e.g. phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, metre, etc., typically in the form of stanzas, often employing humor and or pun, to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning; tending to be used as a tool to work out semi-formed ideas, thoughts, and meanderings, not yet solidified into the form of conclusive and or finalized logic.

Overview
The earliest ideas on the chemistry of love can be found in early Egyptian poems, alluding to ideas on chemical bonding. One circa 1000BC poem speaks, for instance, of how "the nets of your love have trapped me". [5]

In 1664, Margaret Cavendish wrote an entire series of poems against "atoms" and "infinite worlds", in the works Giordano Bruno, in her Poems and Fancies.

Cowper
In 1783, English poet William Cowper penned an Empedocles-style chemical aphorism like poem “On Friendship”, in which he compares the politics that arise from the mixing of courtiers and patriots to the effervescence that arises when salt and lemon juice are mixed, comments that the true friendship might be something akin to the chemist’s attempt to make gold, compares certain friendships to simmering copper, and intermixes this with discussion on the role of religion—the key section of which is as follows:
Cowper (section 20)
This was cited by American poet John Spollon in his 1894 article-poem “Among the Bards”.

Schiller
The following are poems by Friedrich Schiller:

● The World Ways (1795) | Freud-Schiller drive theory

Goethe
By age 20, Johann Goethe had published his first volume of poems. Goethe wrote some circa 3,000 poems, as found among his collected works. The following are noted poem and related poetry discussions by Johann Goethe:

● Aphorisms on Nature (date) | debut 1869 article, per idea of Thomas Huxley, of Nature [2]

The following is from the commentary decoding section:

“My idea in the new novel The Elective Affinities is to show forth social relationships and the conflicts between them symbolically [in symbolic concentration]” (28 Aug 1808—to Riemer ) and “the moral symbols in the natural sciences, that of the elective affinities invented and used by the great Bergman, are more meaningful and permit themselves to be connected better with poetry and society.”
— Goethe (1809), comment to Riemer Jul 24

Beethoven was greatly influenced by Goethe's poetry:

“Goethe’s poems exercise a great sway over me, not only by their meaning, but also by their rhythm. It is a language which stimulates me to composition.”
Ludwig van Beethoven (c.1815) [7]

The idea for a self-starting AC electric motor came to Nikola Tesla one evening as he was reciting a poem of Goethe, specifically a passage from Faust. Sigmund Freud commented that he was cajoled into going to medical school after reading a poem by Goethe.

The following is a notable poet-to-poet statement:

“The rhythm is an unconscious result of the poetic mood. If one should stop to consider it mechanically, when about to write a poem, one would become bewildered and accomplish nothing of real poetic value. All that is poetic in character should be rhythmically treated! Such is my conviction; and if even a sort of poetic prose should be gradually introduced, it would only show that the distinction between prose and poetry had been completely lost sight of.”
Johann Goethe (1797), “Comment [or letter] to Friedrich Schiller [1]

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Rankine
The following is a noted poem by William Rankine, in which one of the first equations of love is found and in which love is posited to be a form of potential, akin to gravity, albeit thermodynamical:

The Mathematician in Love (c.1845)

Maxwell
Scottish physicist James Maxwell used codes, puns, riddles, and hidden meaning is his many poems.

Danish science author Tor Norretranders, in his 1991 book The User Illusion: Cutting Conscious Down to Size, attempts to explain consciousness in terms of thermodynamics and an external force type theory or argument, the gist of which seems to be captured by Irish physicist Maxwell's 1879 final year comment, supposedly in regards to "who" actually wrote his famous "Maxwell's equations" of electrodynamics (Boltzmann having stated that he thought them to have been written by a god), to Irish theological editor Fenton Hort, that: [6]

“What is done by what is called myself is, I feel, done by something greater than myself in me.”

This comment, according to Norretranders, has roots in Maxwell's 1856 poem, written shortly after his father's reaction end, wherein he states:

“Powers and thoughts within us, that we/know not, till they rise/Though the stream of conscious action from where the/Self in secret lies.”

Which, in turn, seems to find corroboration in Maxwell’s famous 1847 (age 16) comment that:

“The only thing which can be directly perceived by the senses is force, to which may be reduced light, heat, electricity, sound and all the other things which can be perceived by the senses.”

● Molecular Evolution (1873) (Ѻ)

At quite uncertain times and places,
The atoms left their heavenly path,
And by fortuitous embraces,
Engendered all that being hath.
And though they seem to cling together,
And form "associations" here,
Yet, soon or late, they burst their tether,
And through the depths of space career.
So we who sat, oppressed with science,
As British asses, wise and grave,
Are now transformed to wild Red Lions,
As round our prey we ramp and rave.
Thus, by a swift metamorphosis,
Wisdom turns wit, and science joke,
Nonsense is incense to our noses,
For when Red Lions speak, they smoke.
Hail, Nonsense! Dry nurse of Red Lions,
From thee the wise their wisdom learn,
From thee they cull those truths of science,
Which into thee again they turn.
What combination of ideas,
Nonsense alone can wisely form!
What sage has half the power that she has,
To take the towers of Truth by storm?

The use of the title “Molecular Evolution”, used at one of the 1873 Belfast meetings, is the alternative title for his 1874 'Song of the Cub', a young Red Lion's impressions of the Belfast address, clearly identifies the phrase with John Tyndall's doctrine of scientific materialism. The first sentence of Maxwell’s poem supposedly is reference to Lucretius’ 50BC poem on atomismOn the Nature of Things”. [4]

A Paradoxical Ode (1874)

See also [3]

Fuller
In 1983, Buckminster Fuller penned some type of syntropy poem-like summary about humans in the universe and god:

"The second law of thermodynamics — entropy — is also, as we have learned, the law of increase of the random element, i.e. every system loses energy — but synergy means behavior of whole systems, unpredicted by the behavior of any separate part. EN-ergy behaves entropically. SYN-orgy behaves syntropically. God is entropy, and god is syntropy. God is synergy. God is energy. And god is always a verb — the verbing of integrity."
No money, no girlfriend (2009 graffiti poem)


No retreat
No surrender
No true love
No job
No house
No money
No girlfriend
No car
A 2009 photo of a type of street graffiti like poetry, found written on the wall of an abandoned building in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, Africa, which captures an aspect of the Alley equation.

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Radhakrishnan
In 2011, American chemist Mala Radhakrishnan published her Atomic Romances, Molecular Dances a collected works set of chemical aphorism like poems she wrote and read at various poetry readings.

See also
Alexander Pope | An Essay on Man (1734)

References
1. Photo (BobinCanada.jpg) described as: “Cris Cheek, Bob Cobbing, B.G., Jeremy Adler, ca. 1977, by Steven Smith” at what seems to be a poetry reading (link), with Cheek and Cobbing, two noted British poets.
2. Goethe, Johann. (date). “Aphorisms on Nature”; in: Nature (per Thomas Huxley), 1(1), Nov 4, 1869.
3. Poems by James Clerk Maxwell – PoetryFoundation.com.
4. Brown, Daniel. (2013). The Poetry of Victorian Scientists: Style, Science, and Nonsense (pg. 165). Cambridge University Press.
5. Ackerman, Diane. (1994). A Natural History of Love (pg. #). Vintage Books.
6. (a) Nørretranders, Tor. (1991). The User Illusion: Cutting Conscious Down to Size (Mærk verden) (thermodynamics, 62+ pgs; thermodynamic depth, pgs. 83-94). Publisher: A. Lane, 1998.
(b) Fentron John Anthony Hort – Wikipedia.
7. Goethe, Johann. (1832). Faust (translator: Bayard Taylor) (rhythm, pg. vi; Beethoven, pg. vii). Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1883.

Further reading
● Angrist, Stanley and Hepler, Loren. (1967). “Demons, Poetry, and Life: A Thermodynamic View”, Texas Quarterly 10, Sep.

External links
Poetry – Wikipedia.

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