Poetic Voices: Susan Lewis and Shanna Powlus Wheeler

In Heisenberg’s Salon, poet Susan Lewis draws inspiration from a principle of quantum mechanics. In 1925, physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) published what is known as his uncertainty principle—that in any system, you can’t know a particle’s exact location and exact velocity simultaneously. You can exactly know one or the other, but not both at the same time.

This idea of uncertainty is what Lewis develops in 54 prose poems—but not applied to quantum mechanics. Instead, she considers uncertainty in relationships, in human actions, in human thought, in our perceptions, and in how we understand the world. Here’s one example:

Indeterminacy

It was time for something, although she could not for the life of
her imagine what. So she assumed her post on the stoop & waited
for the future to declare itself. A tattered bird of dubious
provenance landed on the banister & inspected her with his
ancient gaze. She exhaled with emphasis, but otherwise managed
to keep her preconceptions to herself. The old fellow cocked his
head & screeched. Terrific, she said. How am I supposed to know if
you’re the one I’m waiting for? Terrific, he squawked. How am I supposed
to know if you’re the one I’m waiting for? I get it, she said, bravely
extending her arm. I get it, he echoed, latching on with admirable
decision. It was the last conversation they ever had.

The use of the prose poem form is intriguing. Visually, a paragraph looks more definitive, and more substantive, than a series of lines arranged in the familiar verse form. It implies solidity, definition, fact. Yet Lewis turns the form on its head by the substance of each poem, taking us not to answers but to questions.

Susan Lewis

In the poem above, the speaker knows it’s time for something, and the arrival of a “tattered bird of dubious provenance” might have the answer, or might be the answer. The bird merely repeats what the speaker says, and “it was the last conversation they ever had.” It was also the first conversation they ever had. The conversation doesn’t come to a point—and that, perhaps, is the point. The uncertainty of the speaker is never defined or identified.

Lewis is the editor of the literary journal Posit. She received her MFA degree in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence University, and her BA and JD degrees from University of California-Berkeley. In addition to her several published books of poetry, she writes flash fiction, which has been performed on stage in Denver, and compositions with other artists performed at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. She lives in New York City.

Heisenberg’s Salon is one of the most innovative collections I’ve read.

Lo & Behold is a chapbook of 21 poems by poet Shanna Powlus Wheeler. The poems are drawn from geography, nature, memory, childhood, and other sources, and they are each a small gem, polished and shining, reflecting light and understanding. This poem is one example of how Wheeler combines childhood, memory, and understanding of who she is and where she came from, in addition to her relationship with her mother. We’re familiar with the children’s game of jacks, but this poem elevates the game to a new level of meaning.

Jacks

I play jacks with my mother, impossibly
young as she, seven or eight, spindly,
kneeling on linoleum under dim, orange light.

Between our knob-knees bings the rubber ball;
the jacks chink in quick fists. First to gather all
ten without a double bounce or mishap;

my mother wins. Always said she was good at jacks,
I think. I watch her darker hair willow down long
beside mine; see freckles shift with a smirk;

hear her hand clasp jacks: a fist full of molecules like God’s.
This tiny jingle of jacks is the jumbled song of me.
In dreams I meet the girl not yet dreaming of me.

Shanna Powlus Wheeler

In a sense, this is an example, to borrow from William Wordsworth, of how the child is mother of the woman and mother to the woman. She imagines a game of jacks with her mother as a young girl. It’s competitive; one can almost hear the mother gloating with her “Always said she was good at jacks.” In this simple game comes an understanding of where the daughter will come from.

Wheeler studied poetry at Penn State University, where she received her MFA degree in 2007. Her poems have been published in such literary journals as North American Review, Evansville Review, and Ruminate. She directs the Writing Center at Lycoming College and lives in nearby Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Lo & Behold is a short collection of poetry (the definition of a chapbook), but it is also a meditation, a reflection, and perhaps even a psalm.

Related:

Tweetspeak Poetry’s review of How to Be Another, State of the Union, and This Visit by Susan Lewis.

Browse more poets and poems

Photo by James Jordan, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of the novels Dancing Priest and A Light Shining, and Poetry at Work.

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How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

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Glynn Young

Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry

Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.

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