Brooks Haxton: Schrödinger’s Cat (July 2006)

Brooks Haxton draws on the Schrödinger Cat thought experiment, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Bach’s Cello Suites, Victor Hugo’s “The Graveyard at Villequier,” and a range of work by Louis Armstrong and Emily Dickinson to advocate a particular kind of poetic judgment.  Like the scientist who opens the box to determine whether the cat is dead or alive, Haxton suggests, a reader should come to a piece of work—including work that may be out of fashion—with a willingness to see what is really there.