Working with Scientific Structure
Choose a relationship, then ask how the reader will hear or follow it.
Begin with a relationship worth retaining: return, delay, dependence, or a change of order. A refrain, line break, stanza sequence, or interval on the page can make it perceptible. Ask what changes in the reader’s experience because of that arrangement.
A thermodynamic cycle returns a working system to its initial state while energy is exchanged with its surroundings. A refrain can draw on this return: familiar words come back after a changed scene and acquire another emotional setting.
A wave-like outline can suggest an approach and withdrawal in the voice. Pauses, stresses, and changing line lengths give the shape expressive force. The poem need not reproduce a physical wave exactly; its chosen connection needs to work through language.
Web reading edition adapted from Part I, section 4.1, of the revised English manuscript of Schrödinger’s Cat.