Question Poems by Mark Sheridan
Question Poems – Poetry For The Quantum Age
One of the most important things we humans do is make mental models of the world, ourselves, and others. We use these models to help us navigate our way through life, and we test and improve them by asking ourselves and others questions, and then having dialogs about how we would answer those questions.
But today, especially when we are online, we are much more likely to make statements than to ask questions, and this is a recipe for stagnant mental models, polarized opinions, and dialogs that do not expand us.
Happily, there is an easy way to reverse this trend: we can ask more questions. “Question Poems” is my contribution to that project.
A question poem is pure possibility. Its meaning emerges each time a reader or, preferably, a group of readers has a dialog about how they would answer the questions that they found in the poem. The poetry in a question poem, then, is really in the dialogs that it activates. Is anything more exquisitely beautiful than a dialog between people of open mind and good will?
We are still in the early days of a revolution in the mental models we construct. As we become more familiar and more comfortable with the probabilistic nature of reality, as disclosed by quantum mechanics, we will naturally shift away from making so many definitive statements and toward asking more questions. “Question Poems” is poetry for the coming quantum age.
