This is, I’m pretty sure, the final version of my Graffiti Mathemaku until such a time as I have enough money and time to do a three-feet by five-feet version of it, which I doubt will ever come to pass:
(Note: a better version of this was posted by Cathy Bennett HERE.)
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino has ended the discussion of what mathematical poetry is at his blog, but invited me to re-start it here, which I gladly do. He e.mailed me the following comments for it (which I’ve slightly edited, for flow):
I think if you (or Kaz) are going to make up the rules for mathematical poetry, then anybody can. Me included.
Sure. But eventually those in the field have to accept one, so what we’re doing is having a competition to determine what mathe-matical poetry should be considered by the world at large to be. To that end, each of us is trying to provide a definition that makes more sense than any of the others.
And I would offer, for starters:
1) It is a fallacy to think mathematical poetry is “doing math.”
What is it doing?
2) The “sum” of a mathematical poem need not be the same for everyone.
As in pure mathematics, it has to have the same value for everyone although it need not be “the same” for everyone. Just as in pure math, two plus two can be eight minus two as well as four.
I note that you have not offered a definition of mathematical poetry. Seems to me such a definition is where we need to start. Here’s mine: a mathematical poem is a poem whose engagent needs to perform some mathematical operation indicated in the poem in order to appreciate it. Very simple.
****
Gregory quickly responded, so I will paste in what he had to say here:
bob, you write:
I note that you have not offered a definition of mathematical poetry.
but bob i have indeed, and that you cannot see that just goes to show that you are either not of sound mind or are indeed a simpleton.
Ah, it couldn’t have shown that we talked past each other, as some people do? Assuming I am indeed either of unsound mind or s simpleton, which is quite possible–unless I’m both, exactly how does pointing that out contribute to trying to find an effective definition of mathematical poetry? That is the main point of this discussion, yes?
When I said you hadn’t defined mathematical poetry, I meant with the two comments you sent me. These I took to be your opening comments in what I called “the re-start” of the discussion that he agreed had ended at his blog. I believe that you gave some sort of definition of mathematical poetry there which I didn’t understand and you would not clarify, or perhaps forgot to clarify, having gotten involved in a different phase of the discussion. Anyway, I wanted the discussion here to be a re-start. My hope was that we could focus on what each of us thought mathematical poetry was, and indicated in careful, clear language as I tired to do above.
So, if you assumed this discussion was a continuation rather than a re-start, would you mind accepting it as a re-start, and provide me with your definition of mathematical poetry? If you did consider this a re-start and believe you defined mathematical poetry with one or both of your first two comments, let me know, and I will critique them on that basis. I’ll let you know in advance, however, that they seem to me woefully incomplete as a definition.
sorry bob, you think you’re so smart, but to an objective person, you’re a basket case. and when you say things like “those in the field,” do you realize you sound delusional?
Shall we declare now that it is accepted by all participants that I’m a basket case and turn to the matter of what mathematical poetry is? I must admit, though, that I have no idea how in the world my reference to “those in the field” makes me sound delusional. I wouldn’t mind you explaining that to me.
why don’t you provide links?
Okay. I didn’t think to before because I figured the very few people interested in what we had to say would know all about it, and because I thought we were starting fresh. Also, because the discussion at your blog is very hard to follow–for me, at any rate. Those interested in the background to this discussion can find a series of relevant comments at Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino’s Eratio in response to a three-part series of posts Gregory put up, beginning on 4 June 2010.
Sorry, I can’t figure out how to make an icon you can click to get to Gregory’s blog. At my Google blog, this was easy. I could do all sorts of thing there that I can’t do here, like change font-size or color. And indent!
****
Okay, Gregory sent me the HTML code I’d been using but could no longer find so what’s above will get you to his blog discussion of this subject–I hope. He also sent me a definition of mathematical poetry:
The “mathematical poem,” if it is to be, or to contain, poetry, must have some poetic elements, as well as some formal symbols and operations of math.
I would condense this to “a mathematical poem is a poem containing formal math symbols and operations.” I would then want to know exactly what is meant by “containing formal operations of math.” Would a reference to a mathematical operation qualify or would any operation in a math poem need to be put in use for the poem to be appreciated, as my definition requires.
I want to emphasize that by “operations of math” I do not mean that the poem will be “doing math.” What I mean is that the poem will be, in some way or in some sense — be that metaphorical, allegorical, but for the most part figurative — mimicking or imitating or finding a trope in that operation (whichever that operation may be). (I emphasize: I do not mean that the poem is “doing math.” Math does math. The poem is representational.)
I’ll add here that a definition of “mathematical poetry” ought to be such that it includes all the very different types of “mathematical poetry” being written, even those that maintain that they are actually “doing math.”
This last part bothers me as a taxonomist because it seems to allow just about anything to be called “mathematical poetry.” Is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “I looked on Beauty Bare” a mathematical poem?
Gregory’s reply of 22 July follows:
I refer you, again, to the analogy. It’s there in my posts. So far as Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “I looked on Beauty Bare” goes: Look, Bob, my idea of mathematical poetry is just what I offer in my posts. It’s an exercise in theory, poetics and in grammar. I really don’t think there is any comparison to what you are doing. You can call what you are doing “mathematical poetry,” and I certainly allow for it in my definition (which is meant to be inclusive, but so as not to stifle your creativity), but, if you want my serious opinion, I don’t think what you are doing (which in my book is a sort of vis-po) merits serious consideration.
Gregory, I do not find your definition of mathematical poetry clear. That’s why I ask questions about it. If you want me to understand your definition, it seems to me you are obliged to try to answer my questions. Particularly the ones that you can answer with a yes or a no, such as my one about the Millay sonnet.
My impression at this point is that you define mathematical poetry as poetry in which an operation analogous to a mathematical operation is carried out, using the same mathematical symbols as a mathematical operation. Yes or no, am I correct? Or do would that be how you define some mathematical poetry. If the latter, what other kinds of poetry qualifies in your view as mathematical poetry?
I have a second question: when you say that you don’t think what I am doing “(which in my book is a sort of vis-po) merits serious consideration,” are you speaking of what I call my mathemaku? I can’t see what else you would be speaking of, although my mathemaku have nothing to do with the topic under discussion, which is the definition of mathematical poetry. I have trouble believing you are, though, considering that you bothered to feature such poems at your blog and discuss them as though you considered them worth serious consideration.
****
To this Gregory replied:
At my blog? You refer to the review of “A Selection of Visual Poems by Bob Grumman” dated March 5, 2004. Which you should link to. In it I write: “In my opinion, the mathemaku are without doubt Bob’s best work,
Yet not worth serious consideration?
and they are the four best pieces in this collection.” I think your early mathemaku (circa 1993) have a sort of hand-made, bric-a-brac, economy-of-words charm about them. I reviewed I think it was November 1994 in Meat Epoch your second little collection of mathemaku, Mathemaku 6-12, (1994, tel-let Press) and I referred to them as “learned ku” — translating “mathema” as “learned,” with two syllables, (from, “what is learned,” which is the Greek root of the word) and avoiding any reference whatsoever to mathematics or to “mathematical poetry.” But to answer your question: that’s correct, I do think your visual poetry, which you call “mathematical poetry” and which you maintain are performing mathematical operations, although they may be counted as “mathematical poetry” do not merit serious consideration because there are better specimens available.
Better specimens of what? And why aren’t your reviews “serious consideration?” As is often the case, you’ve lost me.
And about my definition, first of all I make it perfectly clear that what I am offering is a “working” definition, so if you think you can improve it be my guest, but nevertheless I Do Not think there is anything wrong with it but rather I think you should ask somebody in this “field of mathematical poetry” of yours to help you to understand it.
Why can’t you help me understand it by answering the simple questions I feel I need answers to in order to understand it? Why won’t you tell me if my guess at your definition is right or partially right or wholly wrong, and why? What do you mean by “working definition?” Why can’t you tell me exactly what mathematical operations are in a mathematical poem, and what they do in a mathematical poem?
Your confusion is your own creation and it’s gotten repetitive and tedious. (By the way, a mutual friend just read the review referred to above and thinks you “doth protest too much.” Hee.)
What an unnamed “mutual friend” says does not seem too relevant, I’m afraid. But what in the world am a protesting too much about? I was not protesting anything, merely trying to find out what you were talking about.
****
Apologies to Gregory for posting something here of his I thought part of this discussion but he intended as a private message.
****
Yesterday, 24 July 2010, Gregory and I had a long chat on the phone. After he’d gotten through at least ten minutes of uninterrupted excoriation (not always unjustifiably) of me and my poetics and poetry (unless you count my occasional chuckles as interruptions), we had some serious conversation followed bu conversation that was downright friendly. I finally understood things he’d written that had confused me, some because my Internet browser can’t deal with certain symbols such a the unequal sign, the “=” with the “/” through it. I showed it as a question mark. And I think he now understands my point about the mathematical operations in mathematical poems not being analogies.
Later, I thought of what I think is a good illustration of my point: Suppose I’m standing near a table a bowl of apples is sitting on and a friend twenty feet away asks me for an apple whereupon I pick one up and jump in the air and propel the apple to him the same way I’d shoot a jump shot in a basketball game. The apple would be analogous to a basketball, the friend to a basket, but my jump-shot motion would not be analogous to the motion of a player shooting a jump shot, it would be identical to it. Analogously, the long division operations in many of my mathemaku are identical to long division operations in mathematics, but the involve terms that are not idential to mathematical terms but analogous to them.
Anyway, Gregory and I are now friends again, and probably won’t be arguing about the definition of mathematical poetry again, at least for a while. Meanwhile, Karl Kempton has e.mailed me that he, for the most part, agrees with my definition. I’ve changed it slightly since then, however. See Entry 169.
I’m feeling okay–and, amazingly, seem suddenly, after nine or ten months, to getting over my leg pain and limp. I have no idea what’s happening, but I was even able to run an eighth of a mile without pain earlier today after not having been to do that for even ten feet over those past months. I stopped not because my leg began hurting but because I was so out of shape for running after not doing it for so long that I was out of breath! I’ll give my leg a real test tomorrow when I play tennis.
As for the null zone, I again have no idea what’s going on, but I seem completely unable to do much of anything. I can’t even get myself to color the mathemaku I posted yesterday, or see up a pale yellow background to put it on. I have all kinds of other chores and projects to work on but am barely able to continue reading the escape novel I’m currently involved with, about espionage in Argentina during World War II.
I’ve been taking a lot of naps although I’ve been getting the five or six hours of sleep a night I generally get when I consider myself to be sleeping well (although for years I wished I could get at least eight hours a night). Maybe my body is mending, and the process is leaving me little energy for mental endeavors. I hope that’s it.
I’m continuing to fiddle with the mathemaku I drew on John sims’s Mathematical Graffiti Wall at the Bowery Poetry Club. I decided, for one thing, I wanted it arty, the way many graffiti are, rather than crude. Hence, this:
I will, of course, be adding color. Then I’ll cross out “spring” and replace it with “1 laneful of May,” which I will a;sp cross out, replacing it with “2.7 meadowfuls of May.” I hope to have a background that looks like a wall with a few unrealted graffiti on it.
In one of his recent mailings to me, Geof Huth sent a folded card with the interior of ther First reformed Church of Schenectady, New York, shown on its 300th birthday in 1980. I’m showing it here because it sets up the fidgetglyph Geof had drawn across the inside of the card and given the title “The Fervent F.” I’m showing that because it seems to me how good a calligrapher Geof is at his best. The original is much better than the image shown here, by the way.
It’s around nine in the morning here right now. I was feeling pretty good until I came to my blog. I found the entry I made yesterday in what was then my attempt to get back to doing daily entries. The goddamned thing had not been posted. And its title was gone. So I gave it a title and tried to post it. The goddamned computer deleted it. Result: I wonder why I should bother posting anything, let alone trying to post something every day.
Not that anything of consequence was lost. I just recorded a medical update and talked about Zingkrieg, a board game I invented forty or so years ago, when I called it Meerkrieg, which is German for sea war. That came up because approximately two weeks ago, I suddenly came up with an important improvement of it. This surprised me, for I’d thought I’d finished with the game. Surprising me even more was how simple my new idea was and how much it improved the game. Indeed, I think it made the game commercially feasible for the first time–commercially feasible because both easier to manufacture and easier to play. All it had to do with was how the submarines in it moved. For forty years I’d been locked into their having to move from one square to some adjacent square. The main innovations of the first version of the game, which was based on the paper&pencil game, Battleship, was that the ships in it all could move, the submarine secretly. I had to come up with very ingenious devices to allow secret movements while at the same time preventing cheating. The new idea takes care of that.
Yes, a computer version of this game would be easy to make but I claim it will be much more fun as a board game than as a computer game–the way, I’m sure, Monopoly still is.
So: here am in in another project, as if I weren’t in enough other ones. I love the game the way it is now, and itching to make a version of it. I hope to take it to the local chess club and find someone there to play it with. It’s a strategy game, like chess. But dice play a role in it, too, as they do in real life.
I’m proud of it. I believe it as important as anything else I’ve invented, with the possible exception of Knowlecular Psychology. I consider the inventor of Monopoly as great a culturateur as anyone else.
I’m not sure how I’ll market the game. It will probably be expensive because six or more decks of cards will be required (Zingkrieg cards, not poker cards) , tokens to move, the playing board, Monopoly money, two dice, the rules, the box the game’s to be stored in. Actually, that’s not that much. I’ll sell it over the Internet.
Gotta stop thinking about it and tend to the projects at the top of my priority list, like getting another column for Small Press Review done, and re-doing A StrayngeBook–and doing a final version of my graffiti wall poem to send to a mail art show the deadline of which is a week away. Ergo, no more about Zingkrieg today.
I wrote about my health because I’d been to see my general practitioner and learned I’m okay. No anemia. I was hoping I did have anemia. That would mean my constant tiredness could be treated.
I also mentioned that I played tennis without much pain during play or afterward, although right now the pain is back up to its normal level–i.e., noticeable but not immobilizing–or even noticeable when I’m sitting or lying down. The probable reason that my pain was reduced is that I’ve started taking pain pills again after being off them for two or three weeks.
Okay, now to see if I can post this successfully.
The following are the Poem poems I composed as a response to the mathematical graffiti wall. I consider them rough drafts although the first may be almost finished. I started it after figuring out the poem I planned to add to the wall, which is the poem’s main subject. I’ve revised both slightly since the reading–and misread the poems a couple of times there. Note: both are meant to be funny, sometimes Very Funny, in spots. I now believe I ought to have read the second one first at the Bowery Club, for it did get laughs. The first got none that I heard.
.
At a Wall, 10 July 2010
On a wall in
the lowest winds of his weirdness
Poem noticed a long
division example.
It showed “mathematics”
being divided by “number,”
giving a qoutient of “spring.”
“Uhn,” he thought out loud
after a moment’s reflection,
shaking his head in incomplete comprehension.
“To get mathematics from number,
you must multiply number by spring.”
“No,” quoth Criticism, suddenly
at his side that a dialogue might transpire.
“Note the term, ‘arithmetic,’
beneatht the term, ‘mathematics.’
The term, ‘spring,’ times ‘number’
equals only ‘arithmetic.’
To that you must add
the remainder to get ‘mathematics.’”
“Ah, so it’s a joke since the remainder
is the term, “hubris,’” responded Poem.
“Mathematics is arithmetic with hubris. Ha ha.”
“You absorb learning most speedily, Poem,
but surely the text is more thanjust a jest.
Surely, it suggests most cogently
how number may majestically ascend
from where it usually winters all the year,
incommunicative, inert,
and almost less than winter,
to what the woods and meadows
celebrate into when multiplied by spring!”
“You’ve paved my grope across this text
most winningly–e’en to the utmost bound
of perfect reasoning,” cried Poem.
“That heartens me, good friend,”
responded Criticism. “But tell me,
does the meaning of this text
completely satisfy you, as a work of art?
For such, I’m sure, its author
has intended it to be.”
“Why, yes, I think so, Criticism.
Wherefore should it not?”
“Ah,” smiled Criticism. “Verily, you may be right.
“Yet I have still a question: how
can such a quantity as spring,
supreme among the seasons,
themselves the rulers of our earth,
be less in value than arithmetic,
however admirable the underknitting
that the spring carries out
of so much of
our scientific understanding?”
Poem paused for three full minutes.
“I must concede that you
could not be more correct,” he finally said.
But surely what the author wants to say
could not more skillfully be rendered;
ergo, how could it be be amiss
to overlook so trivial a flaw?”
“Because, iwht thought, it can
more skillfully be rendered,” shouted Criticism,
producing a magic marker
and with it slashing out “spring,”
replacing it with “1 laneful of May”;
hesitating, then changing “1″ to “2.7″–
then angrily changing “lanefuls” to
“meadowfuls.”
“There,” quoth he. “The author’s carelessly
implied disparagement of spring
impales the sensitivity of those
of us with taste no longer.
Do you not agree, good friend?”
“I do,” said Poem. “You, once again,
have forcefully repaired my wayward wits. That done,
O learned one, I ask:
would it be possible for us
to not exchange our views less stiltedly?
Or must we keep on parodying Socrates
and some dull blunderer that Plato
has inserted to make his hero seem astute
to his admirers?”
Poem’s show of resistance
to the instruction
Criticism had been trying to
improve him with came too late.
Criticism had been ignoring him,
concentrating on
calling up Number from before
the universe’s oldest axiom.
The winds ceased,
all words exceeded
the last syllable of enumeration
and a winter commenced
whose value was less
than the absolute value of zero.
Poem steeled himself
for the sort of epiphany
he so frequently
had to undergo,
but if one occurred,
he was not aware of it.
Criticism soon left. For an hour–
or century–after that,
Poem felt Number’s continued presence,
although he could no more see him
than he could see his sibling, light,
there being no longer any matter
for light to bounce to him from–
and he himself had mostly gone,
only his awareness
remaining with whatever it
and light and Number were in,
as invisible as they,
but aching with internalness–
as, for all it knew, were they.
.
Poem & Number Discuss Mathematical Poetry
The ocassion was the official unveiling
of a large artwork called
the mathematical graffiti wall.
Number, somberly clothed
in the equation defining the sine function
that he might be visible to the audience
gathered to listen to him and Poem
discuss the wall, opined
that while it was arresting as visual art,
and illustrated the Pythagorean Theorum,
the origins of differential calculus,
and other aspects of mathematics
with commendable charm and skill,
some of the applications of that science
depicted onit, involving, for instance,
the square root of a valentine heart, or a tree(!)
made little sense.
“I disagree,” said Poem. “I’m new to the various forms
of mathematical art, but I like the parts you mention..
According to my knowledgeable friend, Criticism,
they marry the purely conceptual
with the exhiliratingly sensual to result in
a wonderfully fresh kind of art,
an art which, among other things,
unghettos any mind flexible enough
to live in two perspectives simultaneously.”
“on the contrary,” retorted Number.
“It merely relieves the creator of such ‘art’
from any need to be coherent.”
“You’re wrong,” snapped Poem. “The effective maker
of such art is forced to be coherent in two ways.
A good example of this is the poem
“to plus to equals too,”"
which was composed by a scholar
in the philosophy department of
Fordham University.”
At this point Asterrisk interrupted from off-stage:
“Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino,” said he. “And
it’s Franklin University, not Fordham University.”
“Thank you,” smiled Poem. “Now, what this poem does
is simple arithmetic, which it certainly does
correctly and coherently.”
Number reddened. “Correctly!?
You’re telling us that it performs an addition
that yields ‘too’ as the correct answer?!”
“‘Too’ is a correct answer. But when
I said it does arithmetic correctly,
I meant it performed its operation
according to the rules–it added ‘to’ to ‘to,’
or at least I’m intuitively convinced it did,
as I am intuitively convinced
the answer it got, coherently,
is one correct answer–
the way, it suddenly occurs to me,
4 is the correct answer to what is 2 + 2,
but not the only correct answer,
others being 2.5 + 1.5, and 17.3 – 13.3, and 2 squared.”
“Or your IQ,” he wasn’t crude enough
to say out loud.
“You’re being absurd. Mathematics does
mathematics, poetry does poetry.
This thing does neither. Only someone
of unsound mind could think otherwise.”
“Sorry, idiot, but it does both.”
At this point, the moderator had
to step between the two.
Fortunately, he had anticipated
just this sort of fireworks
when the two confronted each other,
so had two security men on hand.
With their help he managed to keep the peace.
Number, however, refused to continue.
So the unlucky audience was
denied Final Illumination regarding
the main matter of the discussion.
One thought before I forget it. Kosti, in our post-reading conversation at an Indian Restaurant, said “yes” with a period after it was a sentence–in what he calls his fictions. I said, “Okay, but why would one want to do it?” Later I realized I probably sounded like I meant, why would one put a period after a single word. I actually meant, why, in doing that, would one want to call the result a “sentence.” I consider the result the poetic use of an infra-verbal device to evoke sentence-ness, not a sentence.
Okay, now to some photographs of the Bowery Poetry Club Reading taken by my friend, Richard Rudder–without whom, by the way, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to the reading. We traveled together from his apartment to the club via the subway’s F Line. Two stops from where we were to get off, a voice announced something I could hear distinctly enough beut couldn’t understand, nor could Richard. But the message was repeated at the next stop and he understood it, although I still didn’t. We were being told that because of construction, we would not be able to get off at our stop but would have to wait until the train went to the end of the line and returned to it. He got us off and we made the correct transfer and arrived fifteen minutes early–or 15 minutes before the event began. I would have stayed on the train, not known what was happening, and ended up on Long Island, or something, with Richard.
Okay, now, at last, the photographs (not looking as sharp here as they do on my screen):
Me, Reading in a Dimness Womderfully Muting My Aged Appearance
The Mathematical Graffiti Wall Prior to the Reading
Audience members were invited to add to the wall after the reading, and some did.
This is my contribution to the wall. I expect to redo the lettering, making some of it more like the fancy lettering of arty graffiti artists, and the rest more coarse, and seemingly of other hands than mine.
Me an' Geof
Arnold Skemer
I spent an hour trying to get Richard’s top, excellent photograph to look like it does on my screen bu failed. I’ve been haivng all kinds of trouble with the captioning, too.
Me, Kaz and Kosti, Just Before the Reading Began
I’ve decided not to do anything with this, which comes out horrid dark on my screen. I’m beginning to suspect that on a better computer, these photographs would look a lot better. Anyway, that’s if for not. Lots of photographs were taken of the event. Geof has already posted one at this blog and will undoubtedly post more.
Awaiting data–probably until around 15 July 2010.
Okay, I’m now going to start adding thoughts to this entry, gradually, over the course of today and perhaps the next few days. The thoughts will be random ones about or inspired by the poetry reading that took place yesterday afternoon at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, and the conversation that followed it as a bunch of us yakked at a Starbucks and then an Indian restuarant, and on our walks to and from these.
In his presentation, Gregory St. Thomasino repeated his long-held view that Gerturde Stein composed “cubist poetry,” something Stein herself claimed to have done. He quoted the old line, “rose is a rose is a rose,” as an example of cubism, having described cubism–validly, I believe–as simultaneously showing something from more than one angle. But “rose is a rose is a rose” is linear, so even if you agree that the rose depicted is shown at a different angle each time the word for it appears in Stein’s text, a reader won’t experience each depiction simultaneously.
As for me, I don’t experience the rose text as showing a rose from different angles but as forcing a reader to see the rose as itself alone. With each “is” we expect to find out something about the rose; instead we are thrown back into what at the most fundamental level a rose is. “Rose-ness” is not shown at different angles but preseted and then expanded upon.
***
Just as a moon or a country pond or a bounding deer can be poetic without being a poem, a poem can be mathematical without being mathematics.
Relatedly, if one accepts the description (not definition) of poetry as the use of words to produce aesthetic pleasure, it makes sense to consider mathematical poetry to be the use of words and mathematics to produce aesthetic please. The definatory problem then becomes what to consider “the use of mathematics” in poetry. I claim this has to refer to the actual performance of mathematical operations, albeit on words rather than mathematical terms. Merely to discuss mathematics as a poet is not to use it anymore than to discuss geology or chemistry or music or paintings in a poem is to use those science or arts–the way, I mean, that a geologist, chemist, composer or painter would. A mathematical poet (by my definition) uses mathematics exactly the way a mathematician does . . . without mathematical terms.
Perhaps this is like swimming without water. A bit silly, swimming without water; but what else would you call it? It is a peculiar form of swimming, but for me it is still swimming. Partial swimming, as mathematical poetry (always by my definition) is partial mathematics–as well as partial poetry.
If you want to say that mathematical poetry doesn’t “do” mathematics, fine; but then you have to concede that it doesn’t do poetry, either. Which leaves you where? What, in other words, does it do?
***
Thinking about Kaz Maslanka’s contention that physics equations use words, so the fact that a poetry that uses words rather than numbers should not be disqualified from being described as mathematical, I was reminded of trig functions. Take sine equals the hypotenuse over the opposite. I thought this a good example of a mathematical operation performed on pure words. But then I realized that the equation is not about two lines of the three that make up a (right) triangle, but about the lengths of those lines. So the strict mathematician’s argument against Kaz, that words may be used in math but they must have some numberical value remains true.
***
I thought of chemical equations, too. The one most relevant here is water + heat = oxygen and hydrogen. Is that mathematical? The term, “heat” has a mathematical value but the other terms don’t. Other more complex chemical equations are much more mathematical but always involve chemicals, which are not mathematical. Some would say their commonplace names are not words, either, but I don’t see why they aren’t. In fact, at this time I consider any typographical symbol to be part of verbal language. That includes the mathematical integral sign, the ampersand and comma as well as letters. My impression is, I might add, that all mathematical symbols are words the way + is “plus” . . . and “&.”
***
Due to something Gregory said in his lecture about the sentence, he and I briefly discussed what a sentence is with Geof after the reading was over. I maintained, reactionary that I am, that a sentence is basically a gathering of words containing a subject and a predicate (although I said, “verb”). Both Geof and Gregory disagreed with me, Geof using, “Yes,” as a one-word example of a sentence with no subject or predicate. I disagreed at the time, but now would accept it in certain circumstances, to wit: if the “yes” was a reply to a genuine sentence, it would be a sentence, to, for it would implicitly contain the subject and predicate of the sentence to which it was a reply.
Richard Kostelanetz later averred that “yes” followed by a period was a sentence. I”m not sure whether it had to be capitalized, or not. Without the period, it was not a sentence–and wouldn’t be a sentence in poetry, but only in “fiction,” as he defines that. I’m a little fuzzy on all this but would accept any single word with a period after it as figuratively a sentence but not as a genuine sentence.
***
Gregory made a point in his lecture about his looking up the word, “sentence,” in a dictionary of literary terms and not finding it there. I later asked him why it should be there. “It’s not a literary term,” I told him, “but a linguistic term.” Or a grammatical term, I now think. In any event, he told me I missed his point. True. Unfortunately, when you miss one of Gregory’s points, he dismisses you rather than trying to clarify exactly what his point is.
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My part of the reading went well from my point of view, by the way: I was smooth and read with feeling and energy, I think. I couldn’t tell too much how the audience, 20 or 30 people, took it although I did get the main laughs I hoped for. As in almost any poetry reading other than those by poets reading long-known poems of theirs or others, I doubt anyone got much from the two poems I read.
A drummer/singer opened the program, John sims moderated and the drummer returned at the end to accompany two terrific break dancers whose names I failed to get (for one thing, my hearing is terrible). I’m sure Geof Huth will write up the reading at his blog. I hope he has the dancers’ names, and that of the drummer, who was also excellent.
In between, the readers were me, Gregory St. Thomasino, Stephanie Strickland, Kaz Maslanka, and Richard Kostelanetz. I’m not sure of the order. I’m a jumbly rememberer, it would seem–I feel I remember a great deal of what happened but often out of sequence.
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I’m now taking a break. I will be reading a book that I found in my friend Rit’s place, where I now am and will be staying at the next few days. It’s a mystery from the thirties that was in Rit’s father’s library. One of the Philo Vance series by S. S. Van Dine, whom I’ve never read but felt curious about, since I’d often heard of him. Its title is The Gracie Allen Murder Mystery, another draw for me since I always liked Burns and Allen. Gracie has a lot of lines in this story–which is fun however short of Great Literature it may be (and as the Rex Stout stories beginning in the same era, are, in my view). Quite a change from the topics I’ve been discussing here.
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You know, this is fairly long entry already. I think I’ll end it here, and continue with my thoughts is other entries. I hope to be back with one tomorrow, but who knows. I’m holding up okay, by the way, and greatly enjoying myself, but my leg and hip have given me trouble several times. Nothing incapacitating, just painful. Financially, I’m doing very nicely, thanks to some extremely generous friends and siblings.
