Chaos/Complexity Theory and Postmodern Poetry: A Case Study of Jorie Graham’s “Fuseâ€

Chaos/complexity theory has recently been applied to literary texts. The present article aims at investigating how this theory has been applied to literary works, and what new perspectives this methodology can provide for literary interpretation. For this purpose, a poem titled “Fuse†composed by the U.S. postmodern poet, Jorie Graham, has been selected. Complexity theory proposes the idea that “within chaos there is order.†Therefore, the article looks for cases of order in “Fuse†that prevent its total disintegration. Although the poet’s rhetoric and linguistic experimentations are regarded as the strange attractors that disrupt the poem from within, the hold of the poem’s mythical subtext and the use of numbers to separate stanzas from one another are taken as attractors that bring back sort of order to “Fuse.†The poem concludes that chaos/complexity theory proposes a systematic approach to analyze a fragmented text for the reappraisal of both chaos and order.