BTT #52: Entanglement

On By Lona GyntIn Poetry

entanglement

Entanglement
 
We gaze out empty to the world and try to see
a plan and place and purpose neatly wrapped
and packaged up in bundles showing how to be
bound up with another, in common orbit mapped.
 
But only the smallest quanta join together
at distance, not just rounding out their separate rings.
These motes and beams, neither kin or mated to each other,
are true unities dancing, in clouds of lonely things.
 
We are not tangible until we’re touched or seen
or measured by another.  You once lightly pressed
your lips and hands and living into mine between
slopes of slow breathings, slipping now to separate rests.
 
God moves with less sense than care, the plan’s not scripted clearly from above,
We’re just fragments of the grief we share, melting in the crucibles of love.
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– Lona Gynt,  January 2019.
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Posted for Bjorn’s dVerse invitation for Handbook of Forms.  We were invited to write a sonnet.  Here is the link.

Poetry Forms – The sonnet

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Bjorn also encouraged us to comment on our process of  writing in the form.  When I write a poem to form, I usually write out pages of free verse or prose on the subject so I can get the ideas or pictures of the subject well established in my mind.  I splayed out three pages of free verse in starting this sonnet.  I then will re-write the piece over and again several times, listening to the sound intuitively rather than being held captive in counting out the meter or the rhyme, in doing this I preserve the prerogative not to have the essence of the poem subjugated to the form.  After this process, however, I will hone and rework and modify to make the poem fit the form, but by then I have a good idea about what the true essence is that needs to be retained.  This form leads us on slyly until the turning volta and clinching resolution at the end.  The sound and rhythm disguise the evolving argument or question that are tied up so neatly in the last two lines.  This then causes me to go back and relish the spaces and the thoughts and the still unanswered questions that are in the body before the volta and resolution.  But I am usually a free-versearian by preference, and this comes through perhaps in the fact that I chose not to follow strict Sonnet meter conventions here.  I agree with Bjorn that the most essential essence of the sonnet is that long argument/question, tied up with a turning volta and a CLINCHER at the end.  I have loved exploring this poem as a sonnet.

Jilly also encouraged us on the same project to consider enjambment in sonnet form.  Here is the link to her post as well.

Enjambment in Sonnets

dreamer

All rights reserved for text to Lona Gynt, January, 2019.  Image Credit at top of post:  Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, accessed at the following link:  https://www.space.com/31933-quantum-entanglement-action-at-a-distance.html

Image at the footer is from Lona Gynt, during a trip in SL to “Dreamers” by Cica Ghost.

 

57 thoughts on “BTT #52: Entanglement”

  1. This is absolutely exquisite! I love how it speaks of these grand questions by using the minutiae of atoms. The couplet is especially meaningful. I think you used the sonnet form and enjambment really well in this piece. Love it!!

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    1. Thank you Sarah, thank you for coming by even with me linking so late. As I get more familiar with a form, I might feel more secure standing on the scaffolding rather than having to build the large pile of sand to stand on, most of which has to be washed away. But the sand pile can be useful too, I think that may be how the Ancient Egyptians moved large bricks to airy heights. I loved your Somnet on sleeping, waking up and not yet out of bed, maybe I should go check out your sonnet on moving that I think I saw was there too 😉

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  4. We know so little of the world — and as deeper higher finer bluer things come into view, revise our raptures accordingly … Like entanglement. Scientists now sense that migrating birds stay on track because something in their vision has become entangled (in the nuclear physics sense) with the earth’s magnetic pole. When we sense that love is the inside of the inside of the heart, we only have fragments and intuitions to guess how to get there. Who knew it was fragments of shared grief, melting slowly together. Amen and amen.

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    1. Thank you Brendan. I have long felt love and grief were different sides of the same coin. Now I think they are simply the same coin. I am grateful always for your breathings into my poems.

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  5. The image at the top is perfect for what you have written – the connections between each of us is an essential part of the connection to God. So well written!!! I also enjoy your explanation of how you write to the form – seeing into the process for a poet is a glimpse into the mind and an encouragement to try new ways of doing things. This past year I worked from stream of consciousness writing to craft some of my poetry and it was a great experience. Not exactly the same thing, but a close cousin, I suppose. Thank you so much for sharing 🙂

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      1. That last stanza is revolutionary. When we hear “God has a plan…” we ( or I specifically) tend to think planning in human terms, all calculating with all the machinations of our busy little brains. But love. Love IS the plan! It doesn’t have to look like how we think it might with a precise itinerary and tic-toc for music. God’s way is much, much better.

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  7. Your process sounds kind of like mine. I free write until ideas start to click and then I try to squeeze them into a form.

    Your work is gorgeously visual and several lines that pop out and stick like this one: “…unities dancing, in clouds of lonely things.” Although I don’t agree with this
    “We are not tangible until we’re touched or seen
    or measured by another.”
    it works well with your argument. You nailed the sonnet rhythm enviably and the “clincher” is very Jonn Donne-ish. Really slick work!

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    1. Thank you for the wonderful Notice Susanne. I think we poets should generally let readers pick their own locks into your poem, in order to not detract from the potential universality of said poems, but I am going to succumb to a sometime annoying weakness and respond regarding the “we are not tangible…” lines. I understand why you would not agree with the idea that we are not tangible until we are seen, touched, or measured by another. I am a bit too much of an existentialist to strictly believe that myself. I don’t believe that we are dependent on other people for our essence or reality. The line was inspired, however by my reflections on the bizarre quantum physics principle that some aspects of reality do not exist until they are measured, and can come into existence based on how they are measured, primarily having to do with the reality of whether certain particles exist as a particle or a wave, or if they have is a dual nature. When I transposed this thought into the poem, especially as it relates to our connectedness, writ large in society, or more specifically writ small in deep personal relationships, it seemed to have some resonance. I started the line in rough draft as “We do not exist unless seen…” but I have enough existentialist sense that I JUST COULD NOT DO THAT, it didn’t seem right. So I thought of the senses that depend on another to actualize, in the same way how a poem is actualized not just in the writing, but also in the reading – someone is tangible in some sense only when it is touched, if it is never seen or touched the experience of being touched has not happened. I do not think our relationships define us, but there are both accretions and revelations of deep bonds and meaning that do not come into being until the thing has happened… but the real clincher is that love cannot exist in a vacuum without grief, and the presence of these two things seems to govern our reality more than any illusion that the world makes any type of sense – just like the bizzare idea that quanta can exist as a single entity even if appearing to be separated by immense expanses of space, I think it is rare and transient for two people, no matter how closely they are bonded, to be like those two quanta, cohesive and and unified, rather than just bonded, and thus the bonds, deteriorate through mortality, or other degradations, and there is loneliness and grief – but hopefully an abundance of meaning and no regret. These are all spooky actions at a distance. Forgive me for the long reply, but I really appreciated your thoughtfulness and kindness, and couldn’t help myself. 🙂

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  8. This is a great way to write a sonnet, I have not used the technique myself… but to start from the notes to give it structure is great…

    My technique is more like using the rhymes like a “hand-rail” to pull the sonnet forward…

    I do like your volta it actually provides a wisdom and learning from what you expose in the first part. To use sonnets for this, as a tool to expose our philosophy of life rather than love is something that resonates a lot with me….

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  9. Thank you Bjorn, I am so glad you like the volta, in that you taught me that this seems to be the essential heart of a true sonnet. I think my earlier attempts at sonnets, none of which seemed to work and I have discarded, suffered from this lack of focus. I have really learned from this prompt and truly thank you. I think your knowledge of this point has really given your sonnets real spark and soul, the form actually serves an artistic purpose that adds to the whole aesthetic rather than just being an exercise with a clever device. That is the difference between a poem and crossword puzzle in in regards to form. I understand better why I have really loved sonnets, and can now better reciprocate. YaY!!! AND Thanks!!! 🙂

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  11. I so enjoyed your writing process as I follow the same – writing free verse, then structuring it to the poetic form that I like.

    I admire the depth of your reflection in your sonnet. I felt there was more that meets the eye:

    We’re just fragments of the grief we share, melting in the crucibles of love.

    So glad that you are enjoying the poetry form challenges.

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    1. Thank you (do we call you Petru?), so glad to have you here to see this. I have really loved what you brought to the trail. I did think about forming it into the ten syllable lines, but usually I seem to get better judging the sound of meter by talking it out rather than merely counting out beats. On some forms, like the haiku, or the shadorma, where the meter is the essential constraint and essence of the form, it is a different matter. Waves! 🙂

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  13. This is really lovely. Everything about it. I like your atoms and wavelengths and the entangling bits and pieces, and your final conclusion that we’re all in this together, sorrows and joys all mingling, and with luck, making something good.

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  14. “We’re not tangible till we’re touched” – this resonates so deeply, especially as with age, we are touched less – losing our footing. Glad you chose to participate, even if late. This is exquisite, deserves reading and re-reading. The couplet sums it all up well – God’s plan seldom makes sense to us mortals.

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    1. Yes, thank you VJ! That is it precisely, it often doesn’t make sense, but I still feel God’s care. I think there is a tangential symmetry in our two entries, the connection of grief that comes with love is illustrated so poignantly on your train, just read it again between patients. So true.

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  15. I enjoyed your poem very much. And thank you for commenting on my poem, I think you are right, I don’t think my poem is a sonnet, I wonder why I posted it? I really don’t write in forms, they don’t work for me.

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  16. This is so eloquent Lona, beautifully written. I also like your comment about not letting the essence of the poem be subjugated to the form, free verse gives us the latitude to let a line run, or fully develop an image. To be honest, strict iambic pentameter can be a bit boring but when it kicks in as in “are true unities dancing, in clouds of lonely things”, it’s really effective.
    “We are not tangible until we’re touched or seen”…is a great line. JIM

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  17. For me, kind of melancholic in a gentle way, Lona, because of the ending mainly, a pleasure to read. In the quantum world time pretty much has no direction, there is no past or future, and I think that is the reason for entanglement (not my idea). Perhaps it is a blessing that we are not tiny particles, that we have time, that we have the unknown future.

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    1. It is melancholic, none of this makes sense to me here, other than that we are here and here together. All metaphors break down when something that is like a thing in some ways is not the thing itself. It is a grace that we are not quanta, but against the immensity of space and the well of time it is hard to feel in some ways like we are much different. I am a sad and joyful person. The arrow of time has been cruel and kind, I cannot go back and erase the confusion I had for myself for decades and the sequelae that has inextricably pulled my wife and children and so many other lovelies into the maelstrom, just because I was confused. Now I can sit in a quiet café, in a shirt and tie and loafers, and sip hot chocolate and everything will seem alright to everyone around me, but I will just feel empty. If I change the circumstance and wear my skinny jeans and tunic, put cute wedges on my feet and make up on my face and let the hair dry curly… I feel just great, but the ones I love just go crazy as it the world is going to explode, and for them in many ways… it does. So we are connected by love, but tracing parabolic declensions to seemingly inevitable separate rests. I do believe in and feel that I have felt God’s presence, but if God has any purpose to our existence, it does not seem to be that we should learn anything that makes sense, other than perhaps the fact of each other, that life is suffering, and connection is joy. Love pounds us and melts us if we choose to participate in its schooling, but in the end it teaches me that you are there.

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      1. I agree, in terms of scales, I am convinced that two earthly samples collected by a visiting extraterrestrial would have organic matter and would be more alike than they are different in the setting of the universe.

        I like to imagine that I have some empathy, perhaps I am deluding myself. I am not a believer, but Buddhist practice, meditation and mindfulness, have helped me. (The first Noble Truth, as you say: there is suffering.)

        You have explained lucidly what you’re going through, and I thank you for that. Although your experience is outside my own, and I cannot truly relate, I sense your anguish and send you metta, loving kindness. Even the past, for me, filled with regrets, can be a blessing, because there are places to hide, to find temporary solace, and the great blessing of the future is change.

        PS: For me, the way that I am, writing, arting, research are wonderful releases.

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  18. This is just exquisitely lovely, Lona. All that Jane said above about the bits and pieces–the light and atoms. I didn’t count the syllables in this, just went with the flow–because it did–very naturally. The final couplet is wonderful. The sonnet seems like a sort of classical sonnet in its philosophical pondering–and I thought also of John Donne–but also contemporary in your words and thoughts. I think it is a really wonderful sonnet.

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  20. Not sure how I missed this until now. (I need to go back to the list.) I really appreciate you laying out the process of how you came to your finished sonnet. It is so nebulous, much like the subjects within it. I particularly like the 2nd stanza and the volta. You have a very skilled way with words and ideas.

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  22. Here is a comment on this poem my sister K texted me:
    Nice. My supervisor, a 60 year old compassionate Yogi, was talking about how she subscribes to what she called the Bhuddist philosophy that life is suffering. She was speaking in context of concern for the younger generation who, despite the benefits of the emphasis on rights and privileges the past five decades, think if they wake up with suffering in their heart there must be something drastically wrong with their life. But she said recognizing that life is suffering means being able to be okay with the suffering in your heart because it’s bound to be a part of life and you can go on with your day and make good out of the day by shouldering your responsibilities, which in our case is 600 children in increments of 60. I know there is balance in all of this but that was quite an insightful team meeting. Your poem also balances things out by admitting these lonely fragments can melt into crucibles of love.
    Love You Lots

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  24. That last stanza is revolutionary. When we hear “God has a plan…” we ( or I specifically) tend to think planning in human terms, all calculating with all the machinations of our busy little brains. But love. Love IS the plan! It doesn’t have to look like how we think it might with a precise itinerary and tic-toc for music. God’s way is much, much better.

    (I’m having a hard time responding today. I accidentally commented on Charley’s comment above.)

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  25. Pingback: I am Worried About Jessica. Full posting. – Scattered thoughts made a little more random

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