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.
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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.
Oops, you may need a magnifying glass. My choice of reproduction seems to be the size above, or four times as large. Anyway, it’s called “A Man’s Intelligence” and may be more informrature–a specimen of informratry–than poetry. Let me quote what it says: “A man’s Intelligence” equals “intelligence Quotient” divided by the product of “The measurable level of Dionysian blood transfused in a saffron masseuse boasting whispers through the cool crystal shot glass of the finest golden tequila” times “The amount of passion fueled by a young pink Venus–her hand wandering in slow circular patterns, a seemingly aimless whistle up the man’s inner thigh.”
These seem to me like they ought to be interesting but they don’t grab me, at all. In #612, I reported that I’d gotten an e.mail from an old literary friend (and early buyer of A StrayngeBook), Fred Stokes. A not-too-interesting entry on Me followed, then this, which I quote in full more to give an idea of where my head was at the time than because it says very much:
It’s not quite there, but I think it has the potential to be Major. The pond, it should be obvious, is a cousin of Basho’s.