Archive for the ‘Mathematical Poetry’ Category
Entry 270 — Mathemaku for Shakespeare in Progress
Sunday, October 31st, 2010
I had the image you can click the thumbnail below to see planned for over a month, but only just yesterday put it together. All I did was take the the big letters in it and stick them into the gray portion of the other graphic. It was tricky getting the sizes right, and getting rid of extraneous matter previously around and between the letters. I’m quite pleased with it, but it needs a lot more simple but painstaking work. It works as a stand-alone, but it is intended to be just a part of a mathemaku, although the central part. I consider it, even in its unfinished state, as representative of my work in visual poetry at its best.
I need to lighten the colors. I work on my laptop, and the colors look much lighter on it than they will print. I have to remember that when I work on them, but never do–until I post them here and the darkness shows.
The image is quite interesting historically, I think, for it uses a variation on one visual poem I made ten or fifteen years ago plus one I made twenty years ago (the big letters). The version here, by the way, has been reduce to half-size. I’m trying for a fairly large final version, perhaps two feet by two feet, which will make it about the largest work I’ve done.
Next task is re-doing the small letters inside the big letters. They’ve always been hard to read. After that I’m going to try to put a suggestion of trees at night inside the backward rendering of “WOODS,” which is intended to suggest windows out of the world “DREAM” is intended to be windows into but which no one seems to catch.
I’m feeling pretty good today. In spite of my trouble with my theory of linguistics, which isn’t coming together yet. My coinage, “magnipetry,” will be the dividend of the mathemaku the “DREAM” image is going to be in, so I’ve been thinking about it. I still consider it one of my definitely successful coinages. My detractors will probably consider it thrown together with lexicographical irresponsibility, but I’ve been hoping to find of invent a word for “superior poetry” for at least thirty years, and this is the first one I’ve thought of that I like. The only thing wrong with it is that “petry” won’t suggest “poetry” to many, if any, who encounter the word. I just have to hope a few influential people use it in helpful contexts, and/or that my series of “Long Division into Magnipetry” becomes well-enough known for people to remember it.
Last item, a definition of “Internet troll,” IHN tuhr neht TROHL: a psychopath who intrudes on Internet discussions seeking solely to damage, or–better–utterly destroy, someone else’s self-esteem, probably out of jealousy over not having any of his own. I have it in my glossary (in-progress) of knowlecular psychology terms although it bartely belongs there, as a kind of “psychopath,” which does belong there.
Entry 253 — Mathemaku-in-Progress
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
This was inspired by a poem Karl Kempton just sent me that pays tribute to pi. I want to fiddle a little more with the remainder, which I want much smaller relative to the rest of the piece than it it here. I didn’t fix it here because it’d then be too small to see properly.
Entry 248 — 3 Mathemaku
Saturday, October 9th, 2010
These are from my series, The Long Division of Poetry, which is in my collection, April to the Power of the Quantity Pythagoras Times Now. I’ve displayed them more than once before on the Internet. They’re here again because of a discussion I recently had about the definition of “beauty.” I thought it’d amuse my friend Felix and my Shakespeare enemy Daryl, neither of whom considers what I said about it at our Shakespeare authorship discussion group sane, to see my treatment of it as a visio-mathematical poet. The top mathemaku is the first in my series. I have it and the one directly under it here to provide an idea of my sequence as a whole. It’s about 15 frames long–so far.
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Entry 181 — “Variations,” Final Version
Friday, August 6th, 2010
I like the “c” as a suggestion that it doesn’t matter how high in value it is, the area under the curve “life = c” will equal zero. Assuming I really have finally recovered my understanding of simple integration.
Entry 180 — Correction of Mathemaku
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
With thanks for the help of Hohenprofessor Tettenborn:
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Or: life equals dust cubed minus dust cubed, yes?
Entry 179 — A New Set of Mathemaku
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
I worked out this little thing several days ago but took this long to finally get it into my computer and from there to here:
These need to be touched up. The middle specimen would not be split the way it is if I had room to show it on one line here at a size that’s readable. I hope it’s first term can be guessed but will probably make it clearly when I prepare my final copy.
Note for those of you who have forgotten algebra, the upright lines are used to indicate that the term they enclose is to be taken as positive in value, or as having its absolute value, regardless of what it’s value normally might be. The absolute value of -3, for example, is +3.
Entry 168 — About “Mathemaku No. 2″
Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Here’s the work from yesterday again. It may be the first work I did that I called a mathemaku. I’m not sure because I was working on the one I ended giving the name “Mathemaku No. 1″ to at the same time that I was working on this one, and I’m not sure which I finished first.
Once it was fully formed, I was delighted with it, and still am. I would love to find out from its detractors what might make it not worth taking seriously.
The big question about it I’m concerned with here, however, is whether it is a mathematical poem or not. According to Gregory St. Thomasino’s definition, it is, for he says that a “‘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.” At least I think it is: I claim it has poetic elements but have no idea whether he would agree since his definition fails to say what a poetic element is (nor indicate how they make a text poetry considering that there are no poetic elements that prose doesn’t also have). Words must be one, unless he’s changed his view that poetry has to have words. Words denoting a visual image should be another, metaphors a third. Both of these my poem has, “meadows” denoting a visual image, and its period acting as a metaphor for the effect of winter on the meadow.
Since my poem also has mathematical symbols (the equals sign and the parentheses and slanted line indicating a fraction) and “contains” the mathematical operation of multiplication (“meadow.” times :/.) , it has everything St. Thomasina would require it to have to be a mathematical poem.
That being the case, it is odd that he disputes its being that, claiming that it, and all the poems I call “mathemaku” that I’ve composed, are visual poems. Geof Huth would agree with me that it is a mathematical poem, but would agree with St. Thomasino that it is a visual poem. It is, of course, true that it is visually represented on the page. It can, however, be orally conveyed as easily as any other written work. Even if that were not the case, however, I would say that a poem must be visioaesthetically significant to qualify as a visual poem. Otherwise any printed poem must be considered a visual poem. Even if one were to argue that conventional textemes like letters and punctuation marks are verbal, not visual elements, it would surely make poems penned by cartographers visual poetry although the cartography would only be decorative, not poetically meaningful, and any conventional avisual poem could be calligraphically enhanced. I oppose that because it would make the class, “visual poem,” taxonomically too large to be useful.
It would mean that “1 + 1 = 2″ is a visual rather than symbolic (I would say, “verbal”) representation of a mathematical expression, too. Why not, instead, consider mathematical symbols, which are widely held to be semiotic, to be verbal symbol since a “+” is really just an ampersand, which is really just “and, ” and no mathematical symbol not readily acting as a word or phrase?
At this point, I think I’ve established that my poem is mathematical. For St. Thomasino and others, however, my further contention, that it does mathematics, is questionable–although it does for Kaz Maslanka (whose definition of “equational poetry,” one of several kinds of poetry he considers to be mathematical, it satisfies). To tackle this question, we must define what “doing mathematics” is. I would say it is “carrying out a mathematical operation on mathematical terms,” the operations and terms being what everyone would agree they are: e.g., in my poem, addition, finding a root, equating for the first, numbers and things having numerical values for the second.
My poem clearly carries out the mathematical operations of equating one term or terms with another term or set of terms, and of dividing one term by another. If these are not mathematical operations, I’m very curious as to what they are. They are not analogous to mathematical operations as far as I can see, they are identical in all respects to equating and division.
They terms they are operations on, however, are not mathematical. They can reasonably be called analogous to mathematical terms rather than identical to them. (Although if push comes to shove, they can be made identical to them, as I will show in due course.) So, we have in this poem two mathematical operations being carried out on (apparently) non-mathematical terms. Is that enough to allow that mathematics is being done. That is, can an event which is partially but not wholly mathematical be considered mathematical. I say yes, although I think it’s a subjective matter.
It makes sense to say yes, because by agreeing that my poem, and others like it, “do mathematics,” we distinguish them from all the poems that do not in any way do mathematics, and this is a significant difference between poems like mine and those others– significant enough to deserve them their own category in a taxonomy of poetry.
If we say they aren’t doing math because they do things other than math, we have to say chemistry, for instance, is not mathematical, because only some of the many things involved in chemistry are mathematical. I can bear it’s being said that my poem doesn’t do math, but I think it insane to say it is not mathematical.
To really pin down the point, let me make “March” = 100, “meadows” = 20, “:” = 5, and “.” = -10. Plugging in those values, the equation that my poem is acts 100% like any mathematical equation. And like the physics equation “energy equals mas times the speed of light squared.” Nor is there anything stopping me from giving aestho-numerical values to everything on earth.
A final debate remains: whether only poems satisfying my narrow definition of “mathematical poetry” qualify as such. My definition is “poem whose engagent must carry out a mathematical operation in order fully to appreciate the poem aesthetically.” Another definition would be “poem some or all of whose textual elements undergo a mathematical operation the result of which is central to the poem’s aesthetic value.” I say it is on the grounds that is is the only kind of poem in which mathematics takes place rather than generates a text or is discussed. I’ve already said why subject matter is a worthless significant element on which to base a taxonomy of poetry since it will start such a taxonomy out with thousands or millions of categories.
I think I may have said most of what I have to say on the subject. But there’s always more to say, so I’m sure I’ll return to it. Tomorrow, probably.
Entry 167 — Example of a Mathematical Poem
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Question: how could any rational person say this is not mathematical?
Entry 166 — Some Background on My Definition of Mathematical Poetry
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
It doesn’t look like my latest attempt to discuss the definition of mathematical poetry with Gregory St. Thomasino is going to get anywhere. In any case, I thought I’d say a few words about why I want mathematical poetry to be defined as a combination of mathematics and poetry. It’s pretty simple. As a taxonomist of poetry, I want to start with as few kinds of poetry at the top of my taxonomy as possible. Ergo, I split poetry into two kinds: linguexpressive and plurexpressive. Not great names but the best I could do to suggest with my names what I meant and not seem derogatory about either category. Linguexpressive poetry is poetry whose mode of expression is language. This category became necessary only with the advent of visual poetry, whose mode of expression is language and visual imagery. Make that averbal visual imagery.
Now, I could have one major category for each kind of poetry that uses a different mode of expression besides the verbalm which all poems use in my poetics, but I preferred to adhere to my rule of having as few categories at each level as possible. Hence, the split into linguexpressive poetry, or poetry of words only, and plurexpressive poetry, or poetry using more than one expressive modality.
Subcategories of plurexpressive poetry would then be the various kinds of poetry using more than just words–such as “mathematical poetry,” which expresses itself mathematically as well as verbally.
A suggested definition of mathematical poetry as any kind of poetry that has anything whatever to do with mathematics seems to me taxonomically unwieldy. It would require the taxonomy it was in to have categories based on subject matter; that is, if you classify a poem about mathematics as mathematical poetry, then you have to classify all poems on the basis of what they are about–Hollywood poems, ocean liner poems, kitchen utensil poems.
Of course, people do refer to poems by what they’re about, but they are, I claim, only describing them, not classifying them, or not classifying them formally. I contend that a rational taxonomy of poetry must be based on what they are as mechanisms, not on what they are about. At least at and near the top of a poetry taxonomy. Let classification by subject matter occur at the very bottom of the taxonomy, if at all.
A simple question should show the logic of what I propose: is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet about Euclid more like one of Shakespeare’s sonnets or like one of my long division poems?
(Note: Gregory St. Thomasino agrees with me that Millay’s poem is only about mathematics so should not be considered a mathematical poem.)