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.
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.
I find it amazing how badly I’m keeping my blog going. I will be worse at it over the next two weeks or so because I’ll be out of town. I’m leaving this afternoon for New York City, where I’ll spend a day or two with friends, then head for Connecticut to spend days with siblings. Eventually I’m to be at the Bowery Poetry Club for some sort of reading from 2 P.M. until 3:30 P.M. on Saturday, 10 July. The subject will be mathematical poetry.
Now for an update of the poem I have, or will have, on the wall of mathematics-related art that is now at the Bowery Poetry Club as part of the month-long event the reading I will participate in will wrap up:
I owe this version to Connie Tettenborn: her comment about my original version that its dividend, “mathematics,” ought to be switched with its quotient, “Spring,” didn’t make sense to me–but it did make me vaguely realize that I was claiming that arithmetic was of greater value than Spring, and that ain’t nothin’ of greater value than Spring. When Connie explicitly made that same point, I recognized that I had to do something, but took a day to come up with the solution above. I know think this may be one of my better poems instead of something I quickly made with a goal of being accessible. And I’ve always like the device of showing a correction.
Title: Poem Demerging. Author: ME! $5 from Phrygian Press, 55-09 205th Street, Bayside NY 11364. 21 linguexpressive poems (i.e., poems that are linguistically expressive only) about my alter ego, Poem.
Here’s the opener, which I chose because it’s among the most accessible of the poems in the collection, it quickly lets the reader know that Poem is a person, and I like it:
. A Bicycle Ride
. Heat-blurred, brittle,
. and crowded nearly numb
. by what seemed like
. a hundred drubbling obligations,
. Poem abruptly took off on his bike.
. For miles he rode,
. no destination in mind,
. or belief in the possibility of one.
. Finally, late in the afternoon,
. he came to a seaside lot
. as yet untouched by urban planning.
. there, as he drank in the fragments of harbor
. a wind-stirred scruffy clump of mangroves was rendering
. just-unsecret,
. his arrival began.
Phyrgian Press is the one-man operation of Arnold Skemer. It has published seven other chapbooks in the series mine is in. They are by Arnold himself, Alan Catlin, Richard Kostelanetz, Leonard Cirino, Guy R. Beining, Geof Huth and Jon Cone. Arnold has also published a $10 collection by Jonathan Hayes.
Just a note about my long journey toward cultural visibility: toward the end of 2009, Maria Damon, a friend of mine in vispo and related art, sent me an essay on my mathemaku by an undergraduate student in a class she was teaching on (I believe) “micropoetry.” I don’t know whether I’m pleased or alarmed at how well a mere college student analyzed my work. Of course, I did like fact that the essay was an appreciation, and that it got attention in a college class. I figure that once college students, and blogger, start writing about my work, one of my main fast-lane ambitions will eventually come to pass: a whole book about my work (by someone other than myself). The essayist, by the way, is Joey Engelhart.
I had meant to post his essay long ago, but something kept me from getting permission from him, then I got diverted into other projects. I came across the e.mail Maria sent it to me in yesterday while searching my e.mail for something else, remembered that I wanted to post it and got in touch with Maria about it. I now have Joey’s permission ot post it, and have done so: in the new “Discussions of Bob Grumman’s Poetry” slot among the “Pages” to the right of this entry.
A little later in the day, I got an e.mail from Conrad DiDiodato, the word-dreamer: poetics blogger, letting me know about an entry he’d made in this blog a month of so ago about my mathematical poetry. It’s very positive. Insightful, too, I think. I’ll be asking him for permission to put it into my collection of “Discussion of Bob Grumman’s Poetry.” Next, something by William Logan, I’m sure. (Unironically speaking now, he is the critic I think I would most want to examine my work–because (1) he might find flaws in it I can correct, and (2) he would definitely provide idiocies for more intelligent critics to work off of, and for me to laugh at.
Not that anyone should care or does, but I feel my old fart need to jabber about my health again, hence this report.
Today I’ve started taking one hydrocodone pain pill every four hours. The proper maximum dose is one every eight hours. It’s an experiment to see if there’s anything I can do to cancel the pains in my leg. Not that they’re particularly bad. Much of the time I don’t notice them. But at night they’re just enough to interfere with my sleeping, and they keep me from running. I’m also annoyed because last Monday I was given a shot of cortisone and some kind of numbing medicine in my bad hip that was supposed to nullify the pain, or at least reduce it, in two days or so. It did nothing. Which is what two similar shots in my back did a few months ago. Hydrocordone have never cancelled the pain, either. I think it may have reduced it somewhat a few times. Anyway, I’m trying it.
I feel I’m pretty adaptable, and have not whine much about growing old. I’ve expected to slow down, wrinkle, taken longer to mend when I’ve bumped myself or something, and experienced arthritic aches and pains. Until last year, I’ve even been pleased with how little, really has gone wrong with me. this year has been an ordeal, though. And I just can’t understand my leg problem. It would seem that my bad hip is not responsible for it, which is good. I fear it is probably half responsible for it, though. I’ll be talking to my orthopedist in a week or so about what to do. I’d be surprised if there was anything else to do but have my back operated on, and hope that takes care of it.
I seem to be functioning okay otherwise except that I feel tired most of the time. I want to take naps but rarely go to sleep when I try for one. I’m now getting five or six hours of sleep at night, which is the most I’ve been able to get for five or ten years. It’d be wonderful to be able to get eight hours nightly for a week, but I suspect that will never be.
I continue to find it difficult to sit down at my computer and do anything more strenuous mentally than firing arguments and invective at my Shakespeare authorship foes. Recently, though, I’ve started to come out of what I consider the kind of tenth-rate depression I often am inflicted with. I managed finally to post on the visual poem of Connie Tettenborn’s that I’ve wanted to. One would think that no great accomplishment, but doing it was a major accomplishment for me. I kept thinking that I’d be unable to say anything of any value about it. so why bother. And even if I did say anything of value about it, no one would read it. Wanh wanh.
I have plenty of good excuses for feeling depressed, fearing I’m be limping the rest of my life not least among them. But a few good things have been happening, too. The publication of my this is my visual poetry chapbook, for one thing. And recently a Finn has asked permission to publish a book or chapbook of his translations of my mathemaku. That’s huge. I’d love to be able sincerely to feel that I don’t need any positive feedback from the world, but I do. I got paid for something literary recently, too: by The Pedestal for co-editing the gallery the Spitter and me done for it. $75. Final nice thing that happened to me of late was being invited to blurb the upcoming Otoliths publication of a (terrific) collection of pieces by Marton Koppany, and coming up with a blurb he and I both liked. I don’t blurb, by the way–I always try to inform potential buyers about what I compose blurbs for, not hype it.
I simply disconnected from my blog–just didn’t think of it for about a week until a day or two ago. Then last night for some reason I started thinking about haiku and came up with the following poems that I thought worth making this entry for:
.
. early April night:
. barely a single haiku
. of moonlight in it
.
. the street’s cherry blooms,
. dazzling, yet almost grey
. besides the haiku’s
.
.
.
.
.
.
