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On February 18, 1930, the planet Pluto is discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona, and then it is named by Venetia Burney, who was 11-years-old at the time.
In 2006, a controversial vote at the International Astronomical Union downgrades Pluto to a dwarf planet, which means it’s still a planet.
Should size really matter so much?
Maggie Dietz, born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is a poet and editor. In 1999, she won the Grolier Poetry Prize, and her poetry collection, Perennial Fall, won the 2007 Jane Kenyon Award. She was assistant poetry editor for Slate magazine (2004-2012), and also served as director of the Favorite Poem Project, started by Robert Pinsky during his terms as U.S. Poet Laureate.
. . .
Pluto
. . .
by Maggie Dietz
. . .
Don't feel small. We all have
been demoted. Go on being
. . .
moon or rock or orb, buoyant
and distant, smallest craft ball
. . .
at Vanevenhoven's Hardware
spray-painted purple or day-glow
. . .
orange for a child's elliptical vision
of fish line, cardboard and foam.
. . .
No spacecraft has touched you,
no flesh met the luster of your
. . .
heavenly body. Little cold one, blow
your horn. No matter what you are
. . .
planet, and something other than
planet, ancient but not "classical,"
. . .
the controversy over what to call you
light-hours from your ears. On Earth
. . .
we tend to nurture the diminutive,
root for the diminished. None
. . .
of your neighbors knows your name.
Nothing has changed. If Charon's
. . .
not your moon, who cares? She
remains unmoved, your companion.
. . .
"Pluto" from That Kind of Happy, by Maggie Dietz – © 2016 by The University of Chicago Press
G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
So, what do you think?
Is Pluto a planet, a dwarf planet, or something else?