10-12-2013, 02:56 PM
It takes a careful reading to see some the deeper meaning(s) of this poem. At first, it seems to be an indictment of the Newtonian, mechanistic world-view. That much is indicated by the title, as much as the first stanza, wherein terror is identified with fantasy-scenarios that are named in opposition to the simple clacking of the Newtonian billiard ball. (And a powerful proof our nightmares are against the notion that there is only a simple law of causality. For if all was reduced to the clacking of billiard balls, cause-and-effect, what gives with human beings being terrified over completely imagined scenarios?).
However, as the poem moves forward, things become more complex. With the second stanza, a new possibility seems suggested: it is the Newtonian reality that is ultimately true, and our fantasies of animate and intelligent horror/evil only serve as a cover for it. The idea that a doll might come to life and kill me, or that someone is stalking me, then, becomes a proxy for the being-towards-death that we each busy ourselves in our efforts to forget ("simple distractions to protect us from the truth.") But being-towards-death takes upon itself the connotation of living, now, in "Newton's Cradle," wherein we are both trapped and protected by the prison bars of a mechanistic universe, and human freedom itself is but an illusion.
This brings up some interesting question. From whence does the illusion spring? Can there be such a thing as deception or error in a causally-closed universe? Or does not the facticity of these things imply the reality of agency?
Accident is brought into the equation with "a fingerprint will smudge cancer on an x-ray." Thus the idea that our freedom gives us power to determine the future in a desirable direction is contested: our clumsy hands, when acting, only occlude from us a knowledge of what conspires against our lives.
The funnel cloud image seems very opaque and perhaps irrelevant, and I'm not sure, furthermore, if the metal duct line is compelling either.
I am not sure that the poem offers a clear answer to the questions that it arouses, but it seems to point in that direction by alluding to the ever-present reality of death, which impends upon us in spite of its absence from life. That the ball should already be swinging, in the penultimate image, seems to allude to the idea that our ability to discern causes is a form of artifice: like us, the cosmos that both shelters and ultimately destroys us is in a constant state of motion, and no fixed and final laws are ever sufficient to describe or circumscribe its motions and machinations.
However, as the poem moves forward, things become more complex. With the second stanza, a new possibility seems suggested: it is the Newtonian reality that is ultimately true, and our fantasies of animate and intelligent horror/evil only serve as a cover for it. The idea that a doll might come to life and kill me, or that someone is stalking me, then, becomes a proxy for the being-towards-death that we each busy ourselves in our efforts to forget ("simple distractions to protect us from the truth.") But being-towards-death takes upon itself the connotation of living, now, in "Newton's Cradle," wherein we are both trapped and protected by the prison bars of a mechanistic universe, and human freedom itself is but an illusion.
This brings up some interesting question. From whence does the illusion spring? Can there be such a thing as deception or error in a causally-closed universe? Or does not the facticity of these things imply the reality of agency?
Accident is brought into the equation with "a fingerprint will smudge cancer on an x-ray." Thus the idea that our freedom gives us power to determine the future in a desirable direction is contested: our clumsy hands, when acting, only occlude from us a knowledge of what conspires against our lives.
The funnel cloud image seems very opaque and perhaps irrelevant, and I'm not sure, furthermore, if the metal duct line is compelling either.
I am not sure that the poem offers a clear answer to the questions that it arouses, but it seems to point in that direction by alluding to the ever-present reality of death, which impends upon us in spite of its absence from life. That the ball should already be swinging, in the penultimate image, seems to allude to the idea that our ability to discern causes is a form of artifice: like us, the cosmos that both shelters and ultimately destroys us is in a constant state of motion, and no fixed and final laws are ever sufficient to describe or circumscribe its motions and machinations.