A review by darwin8u
The Cats of Copenhagen by Casey Sorrow, James Joyce

4.0

C'est n'est pas un chat



A thin book about fat cats,
Copenhagen, policemen,
letters, letterboxes, fish,
buttermilk, young boys with
red bicycles, and soft beds.

It is a story filched using
exactly 230 words;
mixing dozens of fonts
on 20 rough cut pages,
matched with 15 ink cartoons.

This is a literary lark that
spins with the absurdity of all --
all while teasing the moon, oh,
and it holds my favorite caricature
of a relaxed James Joyce.

This book was first a letter
written and mailed by Joyce,
to his only grandson Stephen,
while James Joyce was hanging
out in Zealand and Amager.

This letter is a prose poem,
a child's story, penned by an
already literary God to his only
earthy grandson, now executor,
on an August day in 1936.

I like to imagine Niels Bohr
orbiting his new theory
of compound nucleuses all
while James Joyce purrs on
about his new theory of cats.

Both men in Copenhagen, both
in 1936, both exactly one
year after Schrödinger's cat
was born, or not born,
entangled, or not entangled.

So, perhaps, this is just
one more bookish box, a
Copenhagen Interpretation,
reinterpreted by a quantum
Joyce for a 4-year-old boy.

The Universe is an odd place (for sure).
Many-worlds made more odd --
when you +add the moon,
+cats/no cats + bicycles, all
with just a hint of buttermilk.