Selection and Poetic Transformation
Identify the feature that matters, then find the voice and scene in which it becomes significant.
A source may be a philosophical question, model, experimental relationship, mathematical rule, or procedure. Select a definite feature: dependence on distance, a limit on description, a sequence of changes, or recurrence. A poem need not reproduce an entire theory.
Selection includes understanding limits. Ask which scale and conditions the account assumes and where its explanation ends. This creates room for invention while keeping track of the scientific meaning.
Writing can begin with science, a remembered scene, or a line. An idea suggests an image; an image sends the writer back to its science. Revision may change both the selected feature and the language that carries it.
Web reading edition adapted from Part I, section 3.1, of the revised English manuscript of Schrödinger’s Cat.