The Rosslyn Conundrum

Sometimes wonder is an open ended invitation to wander hand-in-hand with curiosity as my companion. Meandering. Evagation. Flânerie. And sometimes wonder’s companion is worry. Today I tip my proverbial hat to poet Billy Collins for lending me the language with which to worry-wonder about the Rosslyn conundrum.

Is every one of these poems
different from the others…

or are they all the same poem,
haystack after haystack
at different times of day,
different shadows and shades of hay?

— Billy Collins, “The Monet Conundrum” (Source: Five Points)

Collins reflects on artistic variation and repetition, asking whether or not he’s successfully creating new poems or iterating and reiterating the same essential poem again and again and again. This is a question that creatives ask, especially those of us who return to the similar subjects and themes.

Am I creating something new and original? Or am I re-creating something that already exists? Do variations on a theme constitute unique works?

Monet’s haystack paintings, a series constituting just over two dozen canvasses created at various times of day and across seasons, study the transience of natural light and the mercurial qualities of air and atmosphere. Yes, Monet painted piles of straw in fields again and again and again, but his muse was not mounded cuttings. Same hay, different day… 

In the “The Monet Conundrum”, Billy Collins doesn’t answer the question. He doesn’t justify repetition or variation. He leaves the question hanging. For himself. For the reader.

The Rosslyn conundrum then worry-wonders if I’ve taken the same photograph — sunrise after sunrise, gloaming after gloaming — on different days, weeks, and months. Have I written the same blog post from from different angles, in different seasons, with different circumstances but similar conclusions? Are I telling different stories or the same story in different light? Am I documenting change or am I stuck in a rut?