re:Virals 469

Welcome to re:Virals, The Haiku Foundation’s weekly commentary feature on some of your favorites among the best contemporary haiku and senryu written in English. This week’s poem, chosen by Sébastien Revon, was:

     
autumn dusk Schrödinger's cat on the fence
—Colleen M. Farrelly
Failed Haiku issue 102, September 2024
(note for small-screen readers: this should be formatted as a monoku)

Introducing this poem, Sébastien writes:

This monoku directly caught my eye. At first, the mention of the thought experiment in quantum mechanics reminded me of my student years when one of our teachers introduced us to this paradox: a cat both dead and alive until observed… Then, I allowed myself to read the monoku and found out at least three dimensions to it. Firstly, the reference to science as a medium for poetic depth. Secondly, the word play, with the expression “cat on the fence” both literal and metaphorical. Thirdly, the relationship between autumn dusk and what follows, which creates an interesting juxtaposition. I think it is here that we can really dig into the meaning of the monoku and find depth beyond the words. A really well-crafted, witty and above all, deep and meditative haiku. A lot to unpack! Well done, Colleen!

Opening comment:

In the half-light, the half-life of a cat, seemingly neither fully here, nor fully not here (unlike like T. S. Eliot’s Macavity who is always ‘not there’): uncommitted, on the fence.

Many poets writing haiku in English these days have a scientific, technical or mathematical background, or familiarity with the languages and logic of coding; although there is many another who remains altogether illiterate in the sciences and technologies that form such a large part of modern life and thought, even sixty-five years after C. P. Snow’s damning lecture on The Two Cultures:

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: ‘Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?’ “

For most of us readers the environment is filled with technological devices and achievement, and the principles of science are highly relevant.  And can also have a beauty, an elegance, or an insight of their own.  So it is good to see Schrodinger’s cat used, not cheaply as an amusing meme, but consummately to give depth to this verse, ably introduced by Sébastien who has left me little to add. Except perhaps that the two coexistent states of the theoretical cat may not be quite so binary as portrayed in the hypothesis of nearly ninety years ago. Recent research into what takes place at death suggests that there are body cells that continue to grow and change function after the point of no return (an accolade awaits the first haiku about xenobots); and that there is an explosion of activity in the  brain as death proceeds, including the parts connected with memory and cognition. See, for example, a longish but readable article in The Guardian.

A thoroughly interesting, economical and appealing haiku upon which to reflect, cogitate and research.

Alan Harvey:

Nicely done, Colleen Farrelly, for creating a triple fulcrum by placing the setting for this haiku on an “autumn dusk”. This fulcrum pivots on the time between summer/winter, day/night, and between the two sides of the fence. Oftentimes, a quality haiku offers multiple perspectives. This one has multiple outcomes. The cat can jump into a summer night or winter day.

Schrödinger’s cat comes from quantum mechanics. In this thought experiment, the cat could be alive or dead and we won’t know until we open the box. Here, we read a haiku and come up with different interpretations. Is there a definitive interpretation?

Jo McInerney:

Colleen Farrelly’s senryu is a playful sequence of uncertainty tropes.

Its first two words ‘autumn dusk’ establish the liminal moment. Both the season and the time of day are poised between one decisive point and another. We are carefully positioned between summer and winter, day and night.

Then Schrödinger’s cat is whimsically freed from its box. Though we can now, presumably, see whether the state-shifting feline is alive or not, we are still left teetering. The closing idiom has us physically and metaphorically ‘on the fence’, unable to know into which yard the cat will drop.

This delightful monoku keeps the reader happily on its little tightrope, enjoying the wit of the moment.

Melissa Dennison:

Schrodinger’s cat is a thought experiment which is interesting from a philosophical standpoint as it suggests that the act of looking can change reality. The cat is both alive and dead in the box until we open it, then it is in one state or the other. I know! It’s mind bending.

This poem begins with the words autumn dusk, and dusk is a state of transition between day and night. Perhaps autumn too is the same as we move from summer to winter. Schrodinger’s cat is on the fence which hints to uncertainty, to indecision, which way will the cat jump? Again there is transition. Of course the cat may just walk along the fence.

It’s a humorous and clever poem, well crafted and thought out. I love it.

Lakshman Bulusu:

This monoku deftly poses the paradox of deciding one side or the other.l – a juxtaposition of superimposition of illusion vs reality. (The above sentence in bold.) In autumn dusk, a seasonal depiction of unable to see clearly, a decision cannot be made whether a cat sitting on a fence is present or not, posing the question of being simultaneously sitting on the fence or not. This relates to the Schrödinger’s cat placed in a sealed box along with a flask of poison and a radioactive material as being simultaneously alive or dead. If radioactivity is detected the flask is shattered and the cat dies. This is known when the box is opened and seen—the cat is either alive or dead in reality.

The monoku superimposes simultaneity with taking sides and the seasonal reality of autumn dusk acting as a gauge creating an optical illusion of ‘both’ vs reality of ‘one or the other’. What a juxtaposition in the monoku!

John Daleiden:

Colleen M. Farrelly’s monoku is a clever, 10-syllable verse which includes a kigo, a reference to an unsolved physics problem, and a location. While written on one line, the verse contains three elements of traditional haiku construction—a kigo, and a fragment syntactically flowing into a phrase.

As a kigo, “autumn dusk” is very suggestive of the ideas in the ku. Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, when he discussed the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics with Albert Einstein. Ongoing, and differing interpretations of quantum mechanics offer differing explanations of the process. However, Schrödinger’s cat is a theoretical challenge that remains an unsolved physics problem. Farrelly’s selection of an all season-long kigo demonstrates a high degree of effectiveness, which represents the many decades of the ongoing controversy lacking resolution.

The remainder of the monoku—“Schrödinger’s cat on the fence—” introduces the what and the where in the haiku event. Schrödinger’s cat is defined above. The concluding phrase, “on the fence” is an English idiom meaning a state of being undecided about something.

The 10-syllable brevity of Colleen M. Farrelly’s monoku, its use of an identifying subject, combined with an English idiom, demonstrates a masterful writing technique.

Dan Campbell—alive and dead, seen and unseen, always on the edge…:

A Soliloquy by Schrödinger’s Cat about the Poem: autumn dusk Schrödinger’s cat on the fence

I’ve spent my life in the alleys, where the world’s edges blur and the shadows speak a language only a cat like me understands. You see, out here, we live by a different set of rules. Daylight is for fools and housecats, the soft and the naive. It’s dusk where the truth shows itself, if you know how to look.

Autumn dusk—there’s something about it. The way the air thickens with cold, how the wind whispers like it knows all your secrets. The sky, bruised purple, and me, I’m here on the fence, balanced between one world and the next, like I’ve always been.

Schrödinger’s cat. Yeah, I heard about that one. A cat in a box, alive and dead at the same time. Sounds like a joke, but I get it. I am that cat. I walk through this city like a ghost, here and not here, real and unreal. Some folks see me, but most don’t. And that suits me fine.

But that box… that dang box they talk about. Is it any different from the city? It’s a trap, but it’s also shelter. A prison, but a place where you can be both alive and not.

Out here, we prowl the line. The in-between. The humans, they don’t get it. They build their fences, their walls, trying to keep the danger out, but I’m always on the edge of it. Balancing. One paw in the light, one in the dark. That’s the way it is, that’s the way it’s gotta be.

Maybe that’s why autumn gets to me. It’s the season of in-betweens. The air hangs heavy with endings, but there’s always a beginning just behind it. The line between one and the other? You can’t see it. But you can feel it, deep in your gut.

And I wonder… if you’re always on the edge, do you ever really live? Or are you just stuck, like Schrödinger’s cat, waiting for someone to open the box and tell you what you are?

I’ll never know. But maybe that’s the point. The not knowing. The not needing to know. Just the fence beneath my paws, the wind in my fur, the city humming its low, dangerous lullaby. I’ll keep walking the line, ‘cause that’s all I’ve ever known. Both alive and dead, seen and unseen, always on the edge, where the mystery of it all keeps me going.

Author Colleen M. Farrelly:

I’m a mathematician by trade who has published in quantum algorithms. One night while I was swimming in the pool, I briefly saw my neighbor’s cat on our shared fence under the moonlight. The cat looked both ways for a moment, sat in indecision, and then disappeared into the neighbor’s yard. This indecision reminded me of a superposition of states, such as the thought experiment involving Schrödinger’s cat both alive and dead in the box until someone observed the cat’s state.

Thanks to all who sent commentaries. Yielding to temptation: as the contributor of the commentary reckoned best this week, Dan has chosen next week’s poem, which you’ll find below. We invite you to write a commentary to it. It may be as long or short, academic or spontaneous, serious or silly, public or personal as you like. All with respect for the poet. Out-takes from the best of these take their place in the THF Archives. Best of all, the chosen commentary’s author gets to pick the next poem.

Anyone can participate. Simply use the re:Virals commentary form below to enter your commentary on the new week’s poem (“Your text”) by the following Tuesday midnight, Eastern US Time Zone, and then press Submit to send your entry. The Submit button will not be available until Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in. We look forward to seeing your commentary and finding out about your favourite poems!

Poem for commentary:

     
marina bait shop
the ripple of faces
in a dark bucket
—Randy Brooks, Wales Haiku Journal, Summer 2024

The Haiku Foundation reminds you that participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior from all parties. Please see our Code of Conduct policy.

Footnote:

Bio:
Colleen M. Farrelly is a mathematician and poet living in Miami, FL. She’s published in Frogpond, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, dsh, Failed Haiku, Presence, Cherita, Moonlit Path, MacGuffin, Bleached Butterfly, Leading Edge, Night to Dawn, Post Poetry, Scifaikuest, #Femku, Four and Twenty, and many more. She’s the author of two books: The Shape of Data and Modern Graph Theory Algorithm with Python.

—–

If you’d like to browse other creative pieces by Dan Campbell, here’s the website.

Miscellanea, not unrelated

I have seen even lately the view being expounded that tech has no place in haiku, which is to be restricted to “man and nature.” As if homo sapiens is not part of nature; as if an apartment block is not constructed by a species for its dwelling like unto an anthill or a badger sett or a weaverbird’s nest; as if a jackhammer is an entirely different concept from a rock used by a chimp to smash a nut; as if a keyboard is not a greater part of our natural lives these days than an inkstone and brush; screens more often viewed than parchments; a spin dryer and electric iron where there was once a fulling-block, car alarms heard more than temple bells, coders more often seen than daikon-pickers in Edo.

It seems that we should source to Shiki, who had reasons to be gloomy, these negative views:

that humour has no place in haiku; and

that “the ignoble facts” of modern life (as they appeared to him in the late 1800s) are not compatible with the basic ideal of literature and art that he saw as “noble grace.”  According to Beichman, he rejected ‘new’ subjects such as steam engines, or elections, that “leave no room for a single elegant conception or noble thought.”  As if the second law of thermodynamics, or the insights of, say, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, Archimedes, and Plato (elections…) were not  elegant conceptions or noble thoughts before Shiki’s time; or later, the double helix and the decoding of the genome.

I can’t help wondering (entirely without evidence) whether a famous haiku by one of Shiki’s successors under Kyoshi, Yamaguchi Seishi, might have been in part  a clever comment on the master’s summary dismissal of steam engines, the poetry of which along with their trains evidently still arouses emotions in many:

夏草に汽缶車の車輪来て止まる
natsukusa ni kikansha no sharin kite tomaru

summer grasses
the wheels of a locomotive
slow to a stop

Among other delightful verses by Colleen was this year’s very human senryu with an updated ‘shooting star:’

passing satellite
I make a wish
anyway
—Colleen M. Farelly
Failed Haiku vol 9 issue 100

Noting en passant that Colleen is fluent in Python, in the past few years we have also seen occasional  experimental verses with everyday expressions from coding languages, such as the double colon ” :: ” which is the scope resolution operator in C++ and PHP; and with the familiar while loop, that is: while(some condition) {something continues to happen} as in, say, Java, PHP and Javascript.  One won a Touchstone award for 2023:

while(the clouds turn into rain)the lily blooms
—Norma Bradley, whiptail Issue 7

soon followed by another:

while (bumper-to-bumper) the willow sways
—Laurie Wilcox-Meyer
Gene Murtha contest 2024 3rd place

…challenging the restrictive notion of ‘a single moment,’ just as the sequential “one by one,” “beam by beam” haiku do.

We could say that, like several robust programming languages, haiku is object-oriented…
“In Object-Oriented Programming, programs are made up of objects that interact with each other, and each object can contain both data and code.”
You may think that’s as good a definition of haiku as any. 
P.S. if you missed it in Book of the Week, now free to read or download is Scott Mason’s excellent book The Wonder Code.

—–

Received after the deadline from Ashoka Weerakkody:
“Rudyard Kipling’s “The cat that walked by himself” may be the most appropriate attribution for a day dedicated to the so-called wildest of domesticated animals, the Cat. It’s such a remarkable contradiction that here’s a World Black Cats’ Day dedicated to the species whom history has not taken so kindly to, while its closest friend in domestic residence lost no time getting the citation “Man’s Best Friend.” Perhaps the keeping aside a Day for them suggests the same nagging contradiction wherein the cat with its long service to the dark nocturnal world that exists alternating with the other world, of daylight, treading all alone, patrolling perhaps the mysterious unholy areas of the one world we all share unaware of the hidden black magic we totally miss in bright daylight. Hence the black cat, however unholy it can be, deserves this 24 hour intermission safe from all the brickbats thrown year round.

But when it comes to a cat black or otherwise named after its possessor one Herr Shrödinger the brickbats seem to resume, at least in this fleeting moment of an Autumn evening as the Haikuist watches the impending darkness approach within the safe confines of her fenced property, but alas! the rest seeking mind gets a thorn prick as we see Shrödinger s cat walking over the top. The fleeting moment is captured as a static image where the cat remains frozen like a little statue perhaps like one placed up on a tombstone. A tombstone for a cat. But it’s not totally out of place too because this particular cat attributed to Herr Shrodinger is no less heroic than Laika, the heroic bitch (or shall I call her she-dog?) the Soviet Union sent up on a journey of no return just prior to the Vostoc program that sent Yuri Gagarin and later V.Thereshkova ( first ever male and female Cosmonauts, to the Space no one had ever conquered to that day in the beginning of the 1960s.
It’s a fabulous Haiku to say the least and leave it at that eager to hear what its author might say in a few days time”

Received after the deadline from Amoolya Kamalnath:
“With the kigo of autumn dusk, the phrase Schrödinger’s cat on the fence takes on a meaning different from just the cat having the mere possibility of jumping down on either sides of the fence or even moving forward or backward.

At autumn dusk, there is the equal probability of the cat not making it by the next morning or the cat still surviving/living for several more years. The fence is metaphor here.

As we grow older, after a terminal illness diagnosis, etc., we wonder how much longer is our time here. Will we see tomorrow morning’s sunrise?”

Received after the deadline from Joshua Gage:
“This is a very morbid haiku, though the honkadori is very strong. Obviously, Farrelly is refering to Basho’s “kare eda ni/karasu no tomarikeri/aki no kure.” She’s reversed the images, but the idea of an animal sitting on a wooden something juxtaposed against autumn dusk still exists. Therefore, we know she’s tapping into those dark, wistful emotions of that poem to create a vertical axis.

However, rather than go with a real animal, Farrelly goes with a theoretical animal– Schrödinger’s cat. Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment to discuss the limits of quantum superposition: a cat and something that might kill said cat (usually a geiger counter trigger with poison) are in a box. Left unobserved, the cat can said to be both ALIVE and DEAD at the same time because, until we observe the cat, we cannot know and both possibilities exist simultaneously.

Farrelly, then, is revisiting this experiment by putting the cat and the means of death on view for the readers. While this more or less defeats the point of the experiment, it does create a very ominous perspective for the reader.

It is dusk, so the sun has fully set and it is dark and hazy. The air is cool and crisp, and there on a wooden fence, is a mass of fur and flesh that can only be the shape of a cat. But we cannot tell if that cat is alive or dead, so Colleen M. Farrelly drags us forward, pulling us towards that fence, demanding that we observe. What horrors, reader, await us on that fence? What means of execution has some quantum physicist cursed this cat with, and has it worked its deadly task?

This is a very dark and disturbing haiku, and bristling with surreal imagery. Excellent choice for Fall.”
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