POETICKS

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino and I are continuing our discussion about mathematical poetry at his blog. Below is the reply I made to his latest comment (with a little minor editing), him in regular type, me in italics:

You say you are “speaking of the set of language-objects used to represent the real world and that you and I differ in what those objects are.”

Would you explain that, please. And, by “language objects” do you mean words and symbols? Are numbers language objects? Are the names we call numbers by language objects?

The things used to express oneself with language: words, punctuation marks, numerals, whatever things like ampersands are called, square root symbols, etc.  Numbers if you mean numerals–that is, written numbers.  But there are also the numbers in the environment the words for numbers, and numerals, represent.

You say, “poets can be ungrammatical and not wrong but logicians, using words, can’t. You’re just finding users of language who use certain rules and ignore others, and other users whose use and non-use is different.” Would you explain that, please.

All great animals are male.  George is a green animal.  Therefore George is male.  Those are a logical statements.  They have to be grammatical.  Mathematicians similarly have to abide by their rules–their “grammatical” rules if you want to call them that.  Actually, anyone using words has to be reasonably grammatical in order to communicate.

A point of difference between “math grammar” and poetry grammar is that in the case of poetry grammar we can be ungrammatical and still be poetical — and not only that, we can still be meaningful — while if we are “mathematically ungrammatical” we then fall into error. I wish you had addressed this more fully.

I’m afraid I don’t see how I could have discussed it more fully.  I’m saying so what if a poet can be ungrammatical and still be meaningful, and a mathematician can’t.  A logician can’t, either.  I’m saying different specialists use different parts of the grammar of a language, and use it with different degrees of rigor.  Actually, I would say that poetry grammar is specialized grammar and that poets don’t break the rules when they break schoolroom grammatical rules.

I wonder:

Is the correctness of math but a matter of the correctness of “grammar”?

Is the correctness of math but a matter of the correctness of operation (of application of operational principle)?

I don’t know.  I don’t see what this has to do with your definition of mathematical poetry.

(Axiomatical?)

When I write math I am “doing” math. (So to be “mathematically ungrammatical” would apply here.)

When I read math I am “doing” math. (How could it apply here? Or does it: what if I don’t know the rules?)

Sorry, Gregory, dunno where you’re going.

So according to you “mathematical poetry” is a sub-category of “visio-textual art”?

I can’t imagine where you get that.

According to me, “mathematical poetry” is a sub-category of poetry.  It has

no more connection to visio-textual art than to music.

Sometimes you make up your own terms (“texteme”) and other times you use common terms or combining forms like “visio” and “textual.”

Why don’t you use, for example, “semanteme,” “sememe,” “morpheme,” “phoneme” and so on?

I try to use the available terms I know.  I believe there is no term for what I mean by “texteme.”  I’m not understanding why you are bringing this up.

You say, “no analogy need be involved.” How then do your math poems work, how do they signify, how do they function? Or are they, in the end, just pictures? (Visio-textual pictures.)

When I said no analogy need be involved, I meant–as the context, I think, makes clear–an analogy between the “mathematical sentence” and the “linguistic sentence.”  My mathematical sentences don’t act LIKE linguistic sentences, they ARE linguistic sentences.  Or so I claim, and that’s why I (at this point) don’t fully accept your definition of mathematical poems.

My mathematical poems work, signify, function just like any poem: they provide a reader with words and symbols (and sometimes other elements, when, for example, they are also visual poems) which the reader decodes just as he would a conventional poem.

How would you describe the grammar of your math poems?

One side of an equation has to equal the other.  I don’t know.  Some of my math poems use verbal grammar.  The “grammar” of mathematics is very simple, for the most part–at the mostly sub-calculus level of my math poems.  You follow algebraic rules like multiply both x and y by z in the expression z(x + y).  These rules, for me, are just an extension of “normal” grammatical rules, like putting an adjective next to the noun it modifies, using a pronoun in such a way as to make clear what its referent is, etc.  I don’t think of them as I use them.

My brain may not be working well, which may be why I’m having a little trouble following what you’re saying here and there.  (My doctor thinks I may be anemic.  It’s being checked.  In the meantime, I’m using that as my excuse.)

all best, Bob



This entry was posted on Saturday, June 19th, 2010 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Mathematical Poetry, Poetics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.