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Digital Audiobook
Reversing Entropy by Luci Shaw

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Reversing Entropy

Author
Luci Shaw
Narrator
Luci Shaw
Publisher
Paraclete Press
Publish Date
3 July 2025
Run Time
1 hour 57 minutes
Format
Audiobook
$13.95

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What to expect

From the pen of beloved poet Luci Shaw comes a new collection that celebrates inspired creativity as an antidote to chaos.
The poet's own words best describe the heart of this pinnacle collection of new work by beloved writer Luci Shaw:


Entropy: A measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system, its lack of order or predictability, resulting in a gradual decline into disorder. 


Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder, always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art, architecture, music, story or film are human efforts to halt and reverse this loss of meaning. Thus, smaller systems, like individual poems, become highly ordered as they receive energy from outside themselves, from the poet. They reverse entropy because they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas, words and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts in the reader's mind (which is where the word "imag-ination" comes from.) This transfer of images, concepts and ideas into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes, melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader. 


Which is what I've been trying to do for most of my life. 

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Details

Author
Luci Shaw
Narrator
Luci Shaw
Duration
1 hour 57 minutes
Release Date
3 July 2025
ISBN
9798893480016
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Paraclete Press
Genre
Poetry / Poems, Poetry / Poems

Synopsis

From the pen of beloved poet Luci Shaw comes a new collection that celebrates inspired creativity as an antidote to chaos. The poet's own words best describe the heart of this pinnacle collection of new work by beloved writer Luci Shaw: Entropy: A measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system, its lack of order or predictability, resulting in a gradual decline into disorder. Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder, always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art, architecture, music, story or film are human efforts to halt and reverse this loss of meaning. Thus, smaller systems, like individual poems, become highly ordered as they receive energy from outside themselves, from the poet. They reverse entropy because they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas, words and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts in the reader's mind (which is where the word "imag-ination" comes from.) This transfer of images, concepts and ideas into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes, melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader. Which is what I've been trying to do for most of my life.

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