For me, one of the saddest things about my final years is how much I’m continuing to learn about making poems.  For instance, consider the value of simple decorative touches you can apply to a word in a visual poem, such as the ones in the remainder of my “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes,” that I’m trying to put into exhibition-worthy shape:

Previously the letters were all black.  I changed them to brown.  That was all I thought I would do, but then I thought I might as well experiment with background colors in the manner above.  I had the change shapes a number of times, but eventually was satisfied with the above.    I didn’t learn to do this kind of thing when I worked up the remainder, but learned it more solidly–and I was old when I first learned, four or five years ago, when I did, “Mathemaku for Geof Huth”–if I remember its name correctly.  No big deal–in fact, it should be in this case since a remainder shouldn’t be to visiopoetic as to possibly detract from the core of a poem.  Just an added pleasure (if successful).

I think the reason so many old people want to teach is that, since they know they won’t have time fully to enjoy the little things they learn, they want to feel others, if they get to them early enough, will.  So listen to your elders, you young shits reading this!  (Oops, there I go again.) 

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Monday, 5 December 2011, 8 A.M.  I feel a little blah but eager to get some work done.  I just finished breakfast–after getting the blog entry for today done, and setting this one up for tomorrow.  Now to the main chore of today: putting together some stuff to show Judy at Arts and Humanities.  I thought tomorrow, when I have a doctor’s appointment near her office, would be a good time to see her for details about my show.  I want to leave a specmen for advertisement–the “Hi!” one–and maybe something else–with commentaries.

It’s now two-and-a-half hours later.  I reframed my “hi” piece–to get it into a frame with a thing on the back allowing it to be displayed on a flat surface, in this case, a counter that’s in the middle of the room my exhibition will be in.  A trivial job but one I have all sorts of trouble getting myself to do generally.  This morning, I just did it.  I haven’t taken any pills, either!  I also revised the seventh frame of my “Long Division of Poetry,” printed it, then took care of a commentary on it.

Noon Report: I did some effective work of my “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes,” then used a few comments on my revision of its remainder in my next blog entry, so that’s out of the way.  I’m really humming, but I won’t be able to keep it up.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under From My Poetry Workshop. 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.

I’m almost giddy about the following after working for about an hour on it:

I’m giddy about it not because I think it’s any good (I sincerely have no opinion of it yet), but because I took what I had yesterday an truly experimented with it.  That is, I just tried out little design ideas as they hit without consideration of what thy’ do to the work as a whole.  For instance, I thought, “I’ll try  a lighter blue in this area an see what happens,” rather than “If I made the blue here lighter, would it help produce the effect I want, which is to express the joy of escape reading?”

Not that I didn’t abruptly notice how some change might help me get the poem headed where I thought I wanted it to go.  I am also pretty sure my unconscious oversaw everything.  The big surprise for me was that the Very Clumsy, Wrong dividend and sub-dividend product I had ended seeming possibly right!

One other nice thing: I’m seeing new experiments to try with it.  None brilliant but all seeming worth a try.  I fear the poem’s experimental feel is fading, though: most of my new thoughts have to do with further exploitation of what’s there as opposed to just trying any old thing.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 21st, 2013 at 12:00 AM and is filed under From My Poetry Workshop. 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.

The past few days I’ve been thinking about how t do something with my private eye.  I haven’t gotten very far, but at least have a full rough draft.  I have a zero from the last long division as my divisor, and my private eye as quotient.  The dividend and sub-dividend product show below are both just very vague notes as to where I want to go.  I have what I think are good ideas for improving my layering, too.  And the colors.

More discussion tomorrow–with, I hope, a better version.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 20th, 2013 at 12:00 AM and is filed under From My Poetry Workshop. 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.

What follows is a piece it took me practically a week to get done, if it is indeed now done.   It’s the first lesson hand-out for my exhibition.

                    THE JOY OF MULTIPLICATION AND LONG DIVISION

Multiplication is the best of the arithmetical procedures we learned in grade school for use in poetry because of something you might not expect of it: its richness.  Consider something as simple as the poetic idea that “sunlight + soil = flowers.”  Add sunlight to soil and you get flowers.   (Well, you need more than that in real life, but not in poetry!)   A nice enough idea that makes a pleasant poem because it expresses an old idea in a somewhat new way.  But now try multiplication: “sunlight x soil = flowers” and think of the richness of what then occurs: each particle of the soil is now multiplied by the sunlight, not just the soil as a whole added to by the sunlight.  Each particle of soil and each photon of sunlight interact to form something new!

THE POETIC POSSIBILITIES OF MULTIPLICATION AND LONG DIVISION

Multiplication is the best of the arithmetical procedures we learned in grade school for use in poetry because of something you might not expect of it: its richness.  Consider something as simple as the poetic idea that “sunlight + soil = flowers.”  Add sunlight to soil and you get flowers.   (Well, you need more than that in real life, but not in poetry!)   A nice enough idea that makes a pleasant poem because it expresses an old idea in a somewhat new way.  But now try multiplication: “sunlight x soil = flowers” and think of the richness of what then occurs: each particle of the soil is now multiplied by the sunlight, not just the soil as a whole added to by the sunlight.  Each particle of soil and each photon of sunlight interact to form something new!

I imagine it in visual terms, addition versus multiplication:

Is not the rectangle not only a larger but a richer instance of flowers  than what addition yields (even if they’re only square flowers in this case)?

 And then there’s long division.  As a mathematical poet, I love this procedure more than any other mathematical procedure, for look what it allows me to do with soil and sunlight:

The form allows me not only to show the effect of multiplying “soil” times” sunlight to get “flowers,” but also to show that by adding “robins” to “flowers,” I can get “spring.”  The overall image is still simple but has more details than a simple multiplication could provide.  And the form keeps the person engaging the poem in it longer, and the longer one is exposed to a poem, the more one should get out of it.

 

I imagine it in visual terms, addition versus multiplication:

 Is not the rectangle not only a larger but a richer instance of flowers  than what addition yields (even if they’re only square flowers in this case)?

 And then there’s long division.  As a mathematical poet, I love this procedure more than any other mathematical procedure, for look what it allows me to do with soil and sunlight:

                                                         

The form allows me not only to show the effect of multiplying “soil” times” sunlight to get “flowers,” but also to show that “robins” added to “flowers” will result in “spring.”  The overall image is still simple but has more details than a simple multiplication could provide.  And the form keeps the person engaging the poem in it longer, and the longer one is exposed to a poem, the more one should get out of it.

Diary Entry for 17 November 2011, 7 P.M.:  Sort of a crappy day, for me and my partner in doubles got clobbered in a league match this morning.  The team as a whole won two of three, though.  I actually felt pretty good on the court for a change, but made a lot of unforced errors.  As for my cultural productivity, it was about the same as it has been.  I got the thing above done, then used it to get this entry done.  Then I worked a while on my book, finally getting the part about what I’m calling the brain’s “Anthroceptual Management Center,” or “AMC,”  right, although the rightness is very badly expressed.  I’m hoping to pick up speed on this section of the book tomorrow.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 18th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under From My Poetry Workshop. 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.

I’m so at a loss for subject matter for this entry that I am going to take care of it with two haiku-like texts of mine I scribbled sometime during the past month or so on scraps of paper.  One is part of a long division poem I haven’t had the energy to convert into a finished product; when I wrote the one underneath it, I thought it might lead to a long division poem, but nothing yet has developed from it.

                          a sleepful
                          of cherry blossoms just
                          coming into their own

                          the mountains
                          where two continents are
                          learning into each other
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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under From My Poetry Workshop. 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.