Issue 21 Editor’s Pick: ‘The Butterfly Effect‘ by Andy Jackson
by Claire Murray
This poem will hit you, and it will hit you hard.
At least that’s how I felt the first, second, third time I read and reread it. The pace somehow simultaneously feels like the mechanical tick of a metronome and a Formula 1 racing car accelerating out of the starting line. The former is surprising as the poem meter fluctuates between 13-15 syllables throughout, and yet how the poet Andy Jackson plays with rhyming and builds imagery means you may never notice this. You become too wrapped up in desperately seeking to know what the end point is, and where we will end up, even if all your senses are screaming: it will be explosive.
This is the whole point of what the poet is trying to achieve, connecting the gentle beat of butterfly wings to – a potential – chaotic damnation. The poet does not offer you solace or solutions in the face of the oncoming turbulence, instead slowly and methodically increasing the uncertainty with each new line. The true nature of the devastation being unleashed is hinted at in line 4 with ‘fiscal declination’ and becomes obvious halfway through where the poet starts talking about ‘future domination’.
Focusing on the clever conciseness of the poem might lead you to underestimate its vividness. Although there are minimal details about the exact nature of any of the ‘-tions’, I was flooded with memories of images of current and historic events. In a world of much political uncertainty and upheaval, this poem feels like the perfect reflection of how some of this uncertainty started and is developing.
Finally, I think it is important to note that the poet uses ‘can lead’, never ‘will lead’. This is easy to miss as the poem swallows you up into the crescendo it is building, but it is a specific difference to Lorenz’s definition of the Butterfly Effect, in which he claims that it ‘will cause’ disproportionate changes. I am personally choosing to read this as a tiny bit of hope: even if we personally cannot change the world, perhaps in amongst all the chaos we can end up somewhere better than we started.
‘The Butterfly Effect’ genuinely took my breath away when I first read and reviewed it, I hope you enjoy (re)reading it as much as I do!
Claire spends her days thinking about and creating ethical and equitable public engagement with science. Her nights often involve getting happily lost in other people's beautiful words. https://drclairemurray.com/