A Synthesis of Physics and Poetry
Image courtesy: Twitter/@IamLindaAshok
Linda Ashok’s Sharpless 29 is a collection that marries precise scientific theories to metaphors of both mundane and extraordinary human questions, all interspersed with witty and rich poetic ornaments.
Much like clockwork, life can exude the illusion of mundaneity. But this ticking clock is often filled with extraordinary moments when boundaries blur, and two or more seemingly heterogeneous and disparate worlds meet, greet, and mix together, like magic.
Linda Ashok’s poetry collection Sharpless 29 (Bookwryter, 2023) curates one such sacred moment in space-time. As a quantum and theoretical physics nerd who has penned poems on those precise subjects too, I was intrigued when I learned that Ashok’s latest collection explores all things quantum, and other related subtopics of physics. In Sharpless 29, this delicate yet balanced matrimony of poetics and physics is pleasing to the heart—and the nerdy brain, too!
The collection is divided into four sections: Quantum Mechanics, Atomic Physics, Thermodynamics, and Spaces, Maths & CS. Ashok weaves the human into the cosmic, the personal into the universal in every piece. One of the simplest yet most breathtaking examples of this can be found in the opening lines of “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”:
you have no answer
if I ask for your position
in my life
despite longing
despite hunger
& solidarity—
The poem sums up the angst of interpersonal dilemma with a precise and clinical observation,
; that’s the duality
we dwell in
being wave
being particle
Repeatedly, Ashok’s readers encounter the cosmic patterns mirrored in the seemingly-mundane, and yet, deeply-personal human experiences. In “Law of Moments”, the narrator laments,
Every time I wove you near complete,
I undid you to save us from time.
I have promised myself a waiting
to choose one once this life is over.
In these lines, we palpably feel the angst of incompleteness that’s often inherent to human experiences. Consequently, there follows a thirst to find fulfilment and salvation, if not here and now, then in another lifetime, or perhaps, another timespace.
Ashok perfectly weaves together tenets from religion, spirituality, and science in this piece. The Law of Moments essentially states that “when a system or an object is in equilibrium the sum of the clockwise moments will be equal to the sum of the anticlockwise moments.” This implies, in a metaphysically equivalent scenario, the complete ceasing of the dance of duality. Interestingly, almost all religions, spiritual practices and schools of philosophy tell us that human life—and in the greater sense, creation too—can never reach the perfect equilibrium here on this third dimensional level of existence, precisely because it is a plane of dualities and polar binaries. Ancient Sanatan Dharma postulates that creation came into being when a previously inert state of perfect equilibrium was disturbed by a primordial sound vibration. All matter and the physical universe were born out of that disequilibrium.
Many religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and some of the New Age schools of spirituality subscribe to the idea of countless cycles of human rebirth or reincarnations in pursuit of completion, fulfillment and finally, Nirvana, i.e., the perfect equilibrium for the soul. Hence, just as Ashok’s narrator here is oscillating between completion and incompletion, the universal paradox is simply this: on this third dimensional level of perception—or Samsāra—in order for any apparent and fleeting state of equilibrium to be achieved. The dance of dualities and polar pendulum swings, the eternal cycles of creation and destruction, the constant clockwise and anticlockwise motions serve as foundational cornerstones. And one can hope to transcend this problem of polarities perhaps only in some other plane of existence, in some other life.
By juxtaposing its scientific equivalent—the Law of Moments—onto human life and relationships as an extended metaphor, that ‘transcendence’ is just what Ashok’s verses subtly point us towards.
In her prose poem “Phase Transitions”, we see the perfect juxtaposition of the said scientific terminology referring to the varying changes among the basic states of matter, on to the human experience of perception. Ashok presents her narrator’s experience of another person, spread across different frames of time, each time the latter being witnessed in a different state of mind; doing something else than the previous time; being someone else than the persona previously perceived. The individual is thus witnessed as if in a constant state of flux, or transition.
Furthermore, the narrative suddenly turns ambiguous, enabling multiple readings merely by the mention of the observed other being schizophrenic, “I look at her teeth, her jaws, her eyes, and I say she is schizophrenic… Then at the corner, I see my heart assume her body and talking to no one.” Readers are left to wonder (and decide for themselves) if the observed ‘Phase Transitions’ were at all with regard to an external ‘other’? Or was the narrator themselves transitioning among and interacting with their own dissociated split selves?
In spite of being clinically precise, filled with scientific metaphors and clever mirror images, Ashok’s verses don’t lack in the poetic delight of sensuousness and rich imageries. In “Stellar Nucleosynthesis”, she paints a vivid visual feast of the diurnal synthesis:
the transformation
of the whole village
into a tapestry
of fireflies
Similarly, in “Decoherence”, the vivid wordplay seems to appeal to all of the readers’ senses:
marigolds as they wither,
overheard airplanes ionize the air,
crows that depart from electric shocks
& sun and rain decohere all the rocks
Readers are left to wonder (and decide for themselves) if the observed ‘Phase Transitions’ were at all with regard to an external ‘other’? Or was the narrator themselves transitioning among and interacting with their own dissociated split selves?
Such rich imagery immediately evokes literacy devices employed by John Keats in “To Autumn”, in which he masterfully engaged the senses through his lucid description of the season’s bliss.
Ashok’s pieces are not ‘romantic’ in their literary genre like Keats’; instead, they ring more often with an irony in their tone and vision. Yet, that very difference makes her use of a rather Keatsian five-fold sensuousness in her own unique anticlimactic manner even more notable.
Sharpless 29, however, does not limit itself only to the interpersonal dilemmas mirrored in the scientific, and soon reaches over to touch the realms of the personal and the political, too. In a subtle way, Ashok takes a light dig at man’s disillusionment with religion as the promised land of liberation from human suffering in “Carnot’s Cycle”. The poem also alludes to man’s proverbial fear of entanglements through desire. By contrasting a lover’s final surrender to love with Buddha’s imaginary rebirth into desire and his liberation through longing, the poet achieves an ironic inversion. The poem uses an extended imagery of a train accident to allude to the emotional and libidinal human impulses. The image further drive home her sense of irony, cleverly weaves both pathos and hopeful humour in the piece, and describes the constant cycle of reversals often experienced in human existence.
Then more directly in “Daughter”, the poet takes on the nuclear physics terminology commonly used to describe radioactive decay, pointing out:
They never call
the decay product - a son
Not just in society
science too seems
a bit hard on us
This short poem unambiguously and poignantly points out how semantics born out of socio-anthropological tropes have spilled over and colored our scientific linguistic. More than a poem, “Daughter” could be interpreted as Ashok’s own mini semiotics in this context.
The groundbreaking discoveries of modern science have challenged mankind’s implicit faith in a geocentric and anthropocentric cosmos, and have been coupled with disillusionment that followed the World Wars and violence of the 20th century. These incidents have fueled human existential quandaries like never before. The previous romantic predisposition towards human experience has been increasingly made to reckon with the stark realism of blunt scientific facts, theories, and laws. Many incorporeal notions of decadence and nostalgia have been brutally redefined through the lens of entropy and nihilism. Ever since, mankind has been hurled into a dark space full of frightening randomness, and without not only any promise, but not even a concrete notion of redemption.
Hence one wonders if Ashok’s utilization of the theories and laws of science to reframe and redefine everyday human experiences—including divinity, love, eroticism, loss and reclamation of one’s self—may be her attempt to reconcile the two seemingly unbridgeable worldviews, and to thus provide a plausible common ground between the two. Or perhaps the poet has attempted establishing a powerful discourse of inversions, through the contrast of the disparate worldviews, to not only defamiliarize the mundane and concretize some of the otherwise abstract human experiences, but also to carve out familiar anthropomorphic meaningfulness in the seemingly daunting randomness and impersonality of existence, which can itself be viewed through the clinical lens of science.
Ashok’s experimental marriage of poetry with science—and more specifically quantum physics—delves into a wide and diverse range of sub-topics, themes, discourses, and human crises. The result is Sharpless 29, a collection that presents precise scientific theories with metaphors of both mundane and extraordinary human questions, all interspersed with witty and rich poetic ornaments. This ‘marriage’ makes Ashok’s collection an unprecedented read in the arena of contemporary Indian poetry in English.
***
Nivedita Dey is a poet from Kolkata, India. Her poetic philosophy is one of hope and transcendental humanism, and her debut poetry collection was Larkspur Lane: Branched Labyrinths of the Mind (Notion Press, 2022). Dey holds post-graduate degrees in English and Psychology. She can be found at niveditadey.com, Twitter: @Nivedita_dey, and Instagram: @niveditadeypoetry.
