Entangled Poetics

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I thrashed around most of last night in a state of vague fascination.  I was, for the most part, asleep.  I think.  Anyhow, I had been reading an article on quantum computing in Science News.  Seems as if folks at Harvard University and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia are actually making strides towards building such a beast.  That is certainly enough to engender intrigue, but it isn’t what got my sheets in a twist.  It was the whole idea of entanglement.

Entanglement is that part of spooky quantum physics that says that that two or more particles can become "entangled."  When that happens the particles “know” what is happening to their “entangled others” even if they are separated in space.  You do one thing to one of the entangled particles and all the others immediately react as if they had been acted upon – no matter where they are.  I know, I know – why do you think Einstein called it “spooky”?

Naturally, that got me thinking about poetry.  I wondered if emotions, sensations, experiences – all that good grist for the poet’s mill, get entangled with clusters of words and phrases.  Obviously that kind of phenomenon lies at the center of literary clichés – I mean where would “night” be without “dark” and “stormy”?  But could it play a role in good writing as well? 

There is another physics thought – supersymmetry.  Fortunately, or un-,  depending on your perspective, supersymmetry remains illusive in the lab.  But essentially it asserts that everything has a partner; that every “one” is balanced by an “other.”  Yeah, I agree, very Zen science.  The question is this: Is “one” experience balanced by a specific “other” expression?

Painting with the palette of entanglement and supersymmetry, is it not logical to assume that a natural and powerful relationship exists between experiences and their expression?  And wouldn’t that relationship be dependent upon the individual expressing the experience?  Aren’t writers always agonizing about finding “their voice”?  And once they find that “voice” don’t they keep singing the same song? And isn’t it our attraction to that “voice” that brings us back to their music, novels, paintings, poetry?  And don’t we have “issues” when they change?

Does all that, then, make our creative task determining, acquiring and utilizing the expressive symbols and constructions that best balance our experiences?  If so, then there is no one perfect sonnet, sketch or solo – but there is a perfectly harmonic expression of every experience for each individual.  Seeking them seems a daunting challenge – but then so is building a quantum computer.
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