Our theme this month is uncertainty. You could say we live in a time of uncertainty, but hasn't that always been true?
In 1927, physicist Werner Heisenberg first described his Uncertainty Principle, saying that the more precisely we can determine a particle's momentum, the less information we have about its position, and vice versa. The principle represents one of the most fundamental differences between quantum mechanics and classical physics. Albert Einstein, a classical physicist, disagreed with quantum mechanics in general and the Uncertainty Principle in particular.
Einstein said, "I like to believe that the moon is still there even if we don't look at it," and that "God does not play dice with the universe." He wanted certainty. He wanted to believe that there was some certainty in the universe.
In his 1919 poem "The Second Coming," William Butler Yeats describes the atmosphere of post-WWI Europe and a vision of the future. I saw that future as uncertain.
The first stanza introduces Yeats' concept of the gyre, a world which is "turning and turning" in a gyre that widens to the point of apocalypse.
THE SECOND COMING
by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
The second stanza is a prophetic vision that uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming. Yeats is reaching for some certainty, but there is uncertainty in the lines "Surely some revelation is at hand / Surely the Second Coming is at hand."
There are many poems on the theme of uncertainty. In "The Road Not Taken" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost, we see that the former is about choice and the uncertainty of paths offered. The latter poem is about the uncertainty of yielding to temptation versus continuing on. Einstein might have liked Frost's "Design," which is a darker meditation on whether events in nature and life have meaning or are governed by randomness.
In "Ode to a Nightingale," John Keats expresses uncertainty about what is real, what is fleeting, and whether transcendence is possible.
"Because I could not stop for Death" shows Emily Dickinson exploring the uncertainty of death and eternity in a calm but mysterious tone, leaving readers unsure what lies beyond.
Our call for submissions for our May issue is for poems that clearly focus on the theme of uncertainty.
Submission deadline: April 30, 2026.
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