A Brief Reconciliation: Organic Solvents and Poetry

Owing to dichloromethane's (CH2Cl2) high volatility, it is an acute inhalation hazard; and in large doses in the bloodstream, the chlorocarbon's metabolic product is carbon monoxide (CO).

Dante Alighieri composed La Vita Nuova, a prosimetrum (alternating prose and poetry pieces) for Beatrice Portinari, a nine-year-old girl, who he first saw (at age eight) and followed until her death (1290), to write "that which has never been written of any woman."

Heptane (C7H16) can be used to distinguish bromine from iodine in aqueous mixtures: bromine remains brown in heptane and iodine turns purple.

Swedish psychologist and poet, Tomas Tranströmer concludes the poem, "Vermeer" with twin paradoxes:

The airy sky has taken its place leaning against
the wall.
It is like a prayer to what is empty.
And what is empty turns its face to us
and whispers:
'I am not empty, I am open.'

Nitromethane (CH3NO2) can fuel the combustion reactions in a automobile due to its high oxygen content, which enables it to burn less atmospheric oxygen in comparison to the hydrocarbons in octane:

4CH3NO2 + 3O2 → 4CO2 + 6H2O + 2N2 : 14.6 kg of air to combust 1.0 kg of gasoline versus 1.7 kg of air to combust 1.0 kg of nitromethane; one stroke of an engine's cylinder can combust 8.7 times more nitromethane.

Nitromethane has a lower energy density than gasoline, which makes it impractical for non-racing purposes.

This is the first stanza of Charles Wright's translation of the Italian poet, Eugenio Montale's "Nella Serra" or "In the Greenhouse"

The lemon bushes overflowed
with the patter of mole paws,
the scythe shined
in its rosary of cautious water drops.

S'empì d'uno zampettìo
di talpe la limonaia,
brillò in un rosario di caute
gocce la falce fienaia.

Tetrachloroethylene (C2Cl4), also known as "drying-cleaning fluid" was used in the early 20th century to treat ankylostomiasis or hookworm infestation, which has since been implicated with cancer. In 2007, the CDC reported that the Marines and their families stationed at Camp Lejeune drank water contaminated with C2Cl4 from the nearby wells for thirty years.

Anne Sexton's "The Double Image," inspired by W.D. Snodgrass's "The Needle's Eye," related her troubled relationship with her daughter. Here is the poem to its last:
...
I needed you. I didn’t want a boy,

only a girl, a small milky mouse

of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house

of herself. We named you Joy.

I, who was never quite sure

about being a girl, needed another

life, another image to remind me.

And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure

or soothe it. I made you to find me.

(Chemistry and poetry both involve linkages of chemical or verbal units. Ezra Pound's definition of an image is "...an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." Reactive intermediates or chemical complexes can extenuate this meaning from Pound: that which is used up in the reaction can be signified in an equation (the written manipulation), but it cannot be determined experimentally since the time interval is too short.)

I will work on this* TBR