The poem “World Lines: A Quantum Supercomputer Poem” by Amy Catanzano can be read multiple ways. Whenever two lines meet at a “knot word” (shown in white), the reader can choose the upper or lower line to continue.
Katherine Wright, senior editor of Physics, wrote an article, “Poetry takes on quantum physics,”
Wright, in her article, explains further:
In her poem, Amy Catanzano replaces the weaving anyons with four poetic couplets, which crisscross over one another. Where two lines intersect, they share a word, a literary device…Catanzano used to evoke an anyon knot. These textual knots are like forks in the reader’s path. The text can be read linearly—following each line of text sequentially—or the reader can jump from one line to another when they encounter a textual knot. Different paths through the poem create unique word-braids and lead to different “calculations,” just as in a topological quantum computer. “World Lines: A Quantum Supercomputer Poem” translates the quantum theory behind a topological quantum computer in both its word choices and its visual structure….(Physics)
