Archive for the ‘Grumman coinage’ Category
Entry 276 — The Irratioplex
Saturday, November 6th, 2010
Another day in the null zone for me, perhaps because I’m going without the pain pills I’ve been on for my bad hip as an experiment. I played tennis this morning without any more of the slight hip pain I’ve been having with the pain pills. That was nice but since I got home from that and a little marketing (for socks and new sneakers), I I’ve been feeling blah. A nap didn’t help.
Meanwhile, I’m been feeling bitter about my reputation as a defender of Shakespeare. SHAKSPER, an Internet discussion group I’m in, has for several days been discussing the proper reaction to a movie coming out called Anonymous, in which the Earl of Oxford is depicted as Shakespeare–and as Queen Elizabeth’s son–and Southampton is depicted as Oxford and Elizabeth’s son. I think it may destroy Oxfordianism the way the preposterous codes found in Shakespeare’s plays “proving” Bacon wrote them pretty much destroyed Baconism.
What irks me is that several who comment at SHAKSPER mentioned James Shapiro’s recent book on the authorship question, and books and articles on it by others, but not my book. No doubt I’m biased, but I consider my book the best refutation of anti-Stratfordianism in print, and the only one that presents a serious theory of what makes people become anti-Stratfordianism–whether valid or not. Yet the Shakespeare establishment, and their little followers at the two authorship sites I participate in don’t mention me, or respond to my posts to SHAKSPER. Maybe they don’t want it known that our side has a crank like me on it. A crank, morover, who calls anti-Stratfordians “psitchotics.”
Nonetheless, my attempt to understand what causes reasonably intelligent people to become psitchotics where Shakespeare is concerned, and–more important–find a way to express my finding entertainingly and coherently, continues, with a minor development today, the new term “irratioplex.” This I pronounce ehr RAH shuh plehks. Do I misspell it? Possibly, but “irratiplex” doesn’t do it for me.
And irratioplex is an irrational knowleplex. There are several. Two of them are the rigidniplex and the enthusiaplex. I now maintain that all anti-Stratfordians are afflicted with one or the other of these two irratioplexes. The new term allows me to couple them as victims of irratioplexes, then show how they differ from one another by virtue of their (slightly) different irratioplexes. The rigidniks’ irratioplex is forced on them by their innate psychology; the enthusiasts’ (who are frrewenders) acquire their irratioplexes during fits of enthiuiasm, making them quickly too strong thereafter to resist. Both irratioplexes act the same once active. both nearly impossible for their victims’ to resist.
My new strategy for the description of wacks is to concentrate on irratioplexes in general, proceed to rigidniplexes and enthusiaplexes in general, then to how the latter two specifically enslave their victims to anti-Stratfordianism.
Entry 261 — “Magnipetry” and “Magnipoet”
Friday, October 22nd, 2010
“Magnipetry” and “magnipoet.” maahg NIH peh tree and MAAH nih POH eht. I know probably no one at all but I will now use them, but I’ve been needing them for years. As I hope will be clear, they mean “superior poetry,” and “superior poet.”
My many critics will tell me that “superior poetry” and “superior poet” or like adjective/noun combinations, have been available for years, and proven satisfactory for everyone but me. So why cram two new words for what they mean into the lexicon? Well, for one thing, I believe important things should have names, not just descriptions, which “superior poetry” is. (Am I really the only person in the world who believes this? Sometimes I think so.)
I hope “magnipetry” suggests “magnificence.” I feel it ought quite clearly to say, “large poetry,” and its derivative say “large poet.” Where I’ve often found myself wanting such words is in discussions of what makes a poet, when we’re talking about what makes a poet worth reading or listening to. One always has to stick an adjective in.
Than there’s my problem with those who denounce poetry they don’t like as “not poetry,” when they have to mean they’re speaking of bad poetry. If they aren’t, then they need a name for what the texts they are referring to are. “Doggerel” is a good one for some but not all of it. They can say, “This is not good poetry,” but that sounds weak to me. They mean more than that, so we need a single name for it.
“Poetaster” is a good word for inferior poet, but it seems awkward to me, and “poetastry” isn’t (yet) a word. Even with “poetaster,” which I’m not even sure how to pronounce, we still need a name for “good poet,” since a poetaster is a kind of poet, not a non-poet.
The real reason I suddenly made my coinages, having woken up with a headache in the middle of last night for a few minutes. I was thinking about a long division poem I’ve made a sketch of in which I divide something (I forget what, right now) into “poetry.” I times that by Shakespeare’s signature, and I get a graphic that’s about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I think is Shakespeare’s most poetic comedy, and a favorite of mine. But there’s a remainder. My problem is that the graphic is a poem, in my view–since it has words. Moreover, some of the words play poetic word-games. So there should not be a remainder.
But I really want to be divided into is “poetry of the highest order.” I thought of various phrases for that, including, “poetry of the highest order,” but didn’t like them. They sounded somewhat pretentious to me. And I found nothing with more than one word in it to have the sock I wanted, the sock that “poetry,” would have if I could use it. Hence, “magnipetry.” It will keep most people from liking the poem as much as I’d like them to, but “poetry,” just isn’t right.
The same word will damage my long series of various long divisions of “poetry,” which I’ve always thought had the same problem this new piece has. On the other hand, if my math poetry ever catches on, and people like my series, it’s possible the word might catch on.
While people have little trouble with new names for new things, they seem wired to reject new names for old things, even important old things that have never had a name, like visual art (which I now call “visimagery,” after auditioning more than a dozen names). But I won’t give up trying to get the names I come up with into general usage.
It’s be nice to have a name for okay poetry that isn’t magnipetry, but I’m willing to let adjective take care of such poetry, and those who compose it. “He’s a pretty good poet, but not a magnipoet,” for instance. I think “magnipetry” is a good word. I don’t think “magnipoet” is. Dunno what to do about that, however. I may well drop it. The sneer, “he calls himself a poet,” for someone who writes bad poetry, “could be corrected to him think him write magnipetry.” Hmmm, I will drop it.
Entry 245 — Varieties of Evaluceptual Types
Thursday, October 7th, 2010
Because the names of my aesthetic appreciation types, “apollonian” and “dionysian,” may connect too confusingly to Nietzsche’s similarly-named personality types, I am now calling apollonians, dionysians and hermesians “verosolysts,” ” instinctilysts” and “expressilysts.”
Because the verosolyst evaluates poetry primarily on the basis of its truth (according to its freedom from or contamination by contradictions), I made his name out of “veroso” of my term for “true wisdom”, or “the rational seeking of significant truths about material reality”, so a general term for philosophy, science, history, literary criticism, economics . . . and the “lyst” of “analyst.”
The instinctilyst’s name derives from the fact that he evaluates an artwork primarily on the basis of the instinctive pleasure it affords by means of its attention to stimuli normal human beings are automatically attracted to like a 3-month-year-old happy baby.
The expressilyst is primarily concerned with how a poem presents its content, or its manner os expression, rather than with its content. So we have the old what versus how again, this time as instinctilystic appreciation versus expressilystic appreciation.
Entry 237 — Celebratory and Illyrical Art
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010
I’ve been reworking my thoughts concerning what I’m now calling “illyrical art”–art, that on the surface, seems mainly to produce pain. I’m planning a short booklet laying out my taxonomy of poetry, which I feel needs a preliminary definition of art, among other things. That is what the following sketch partially addresses.
Celebratory Art & Illyrical Art
Most art–just about all the art I like–celebrates the beauty of
existence. The final claim of such art, however, is not that
existence is beautiful, but that it is beautiful enough to celebrate, or
significantly more beautiful than ugly. Some art, which I call
“illyrical art,” seems obsessed with the ugliness of existence,
though. It is prized by the cognescenti more than celebratory art is,
in fact, tragedy being its most common variety. It seems to
contradict my notion that human beings are wired to seek that
which gives them pleasure, and reject as much as possible that
which gives them pain. And I define art as that which give
aesthetic pleasure. How can I reconcile these views of mine with
the unarguable preference of so many people for art that seems to
give little or nothing but pain?
I’ve pondered this question a good deal, concluding finally that
even illyrical art ultimately provides people with more pleasure
than pain. It does so by providing one of five values, or (more
commonly) some mixture of one or more of these values):
The Pleasurable Details Value
1. A work of illyrical art–an effective tragedy, say–will contain
details that give aesthetic pleasure,” I need only specify that I mean
such details as the metaphors in Shakespearean tragedy, or the
melodic effects of certain sad poems–or vivid scenes or characters.
Their contrast with the painful elements in the art will increase the
pleasure they give. These pleasurable details will rarely if ever
compensate for twork’s pain–unless one of them is a
compensatingly redeeming ending: each of Shakespeare’s
tragedies, for instance, has an ending that nullifies its tragic
message to some degree. Life is shown restored to The Way
Things Should Be. A good king assumes the throne. The bad guys
are buried. Civilization has gotten through another time of horror
bloodied but alive.
The Artistic Conquering of Evil Value
2. A work of illyrical art will cause a person the pleasure of seeing
something conquered, at least to a degree, by art–that is, by an
artist’s organization and expression of it. This is just another way
of saying that finding the exactly right words eloquently to evoke
elements dangerous or ugly, and arranging them in some kind of
pattern (which will “explain” the painful elements, in a manner of
speaking, or make them more coherent, more logical, than they are
in the chaos of reality) is, of course, a way of giving the antithesis
of the beautiful a kind of beauty. That, in turn, will give an
engagent aesthetic pleasure, although probably not enough to offset
the aesthetic pain of the work. But with the other positive
components of the work added to it, it will–as it must to be a
successful work of art.
The Sentimental Value
3. Illyrical art may provide an engagent with a friend with whom
one shares a reaction to the pain the art concerns–a character in a
tragic play, a persona in a melancholy poem, or a reader’s
impression of the author of such a poem. For example, an
engagent might experience Macbeth as a friend by sympathizing
with his misery over the death of his wife and his final
dissatisfaction with life (even despite the evil acts he has
performed). The feeling that Macbeth is an ally of the engagent
against the vileness of life will then cause a pleasure possibly
superior to the pain of Macbeth’s bad end, and the pain caused by
his crimes. In other words: tragedy causes one to experience the
anthroceptual pleasure of learning one is not alone.
The Simple Relief Value
4. Tragedy, or any artwork (or art adventure like a ride on a roller
coaster) dealing with ugly, fearsome, horrifying or similar painful
material, can, when the artwork is escaped, result in the pleasure of
gaining safety. I consider this the primary reason people “enjoy”
illyrical art.
The Masonchistic Pleasure
5. illyrical art acts to make the evil of life easier to take simply by
exposing us to it, in packaging that reduces its lethalness, thereby
allowing us to learn it into bearableness. Or: “illyrical art, as
Aristotle has it, arouses pity and fear, the purgation of which
through catharsis, makes one feel better (anthroceptually).” One
feels more fit to withstand evil after effective art.
Entry 232 — New Knowlecular Terminology!!!
Saturday, September 25th, 2010
After so many near-worthless entries, at last a really really exciting one! A very lame school marm type at HLAS, one of my Shakespeare Authorship “Question” sites, got me thinking about rigidniplexes. They are fixational systems rigidniks form that are the basis of the authorship theories of the most dedicated and rigidly doctrinaire anti-Stratfordians. One of their main functions is defending the rigidnik against non-conformity. I had always thought of them as necessarily irrational.
But it seemed to me the school marm, Mark Houlsby (which may be a pseudonym), has one, because of the way he constantly gets after people for rude remarks, going off-topic, and disregard of what he thinks is grammatical correctness, as well as any view he disagrees with, which are mostly non-conformist views. Yet Houlsby is not an anti-Stratfordian nor does he seem any more irrational than every normal person is, just set in his narrow ways. So, I decided there are two basic kinds of rigidniplexes, “hyperrigidniplexes” and “hyporigidniplexes,” the first being highly irrational, the second not particularly irrational.
Actually, I’ve always believed in more than one kind of rigidniplex, but I hadn’t come up with names for them I liked, and my definitions of them were vague. Now I think I’ll call the most rigidnikal of rigidniplexes, the ones suffered by genuine psychotics, “ultrarigidniplexes.” Such rigidniplexes are either not “sensibly” irrational, the way hyperrigidniplexes are, or are based on unreality rather than the irrational, although they are no doubt irrational as well. For instance, an ultrarigidnik may believe unreal aliens from another dimension are after him whereas a mere hyperrigidnik will only believe, say, that no one whose parents are illiterate can become a great writer, which is idiotic but but is merely a misinterpretation of reality, wholly irrational, but not drawing on pure fantasy.
There are probably two levels of hyporigidniks–no, make that three. Managerial hyporigidniks are the most successful rigidniks, common in the officer corps of the military, and on corporation boards, and, of course, running federal bureaucracies, or universities. Rigidnikal enough to dominate third-raters, and hold unimaginatively to a course that has proved effective in the past, and rally others at their level, along with the masses, against non-conformity, which will include a country’s culturateurs. Such hyporigidniks are the great defenders of mediocrity. And here’s where this entry becomes on-topic for a blog called “Poeticks,” for among the great defenders of mediocrity are the people selecting prize- and grants-winners in poetry, and which contemporaries’ poetry should be taught, published and made the subject of widely-circulated critical essays or books.
A level below the managerial hyporigidniks are the marmly hyporiginiks. Only slightly above-average in charactration, or basal mental energy, below average in accommodance, the engine of flexibility, imagination, creativity, but with possiblely slightly above average accelerance, or the ability to raise their mental energy when appropriate. So, not in managerial hyporigidniks’ league, but able to construct rigidniplexeses about trivialities like table manners, spelling, etc., and lord it over milyoops. And, in poetry, repeat the opinions of the Establishment.
Managerial hyporigidniks, I should have said, are higher in charactration than lesser hyporigidniks. Indeed, each level of rigidniks has more charactration, and less accommodance–and smaller but more life-consuming rigidniplexes. The lowest-level hyporigidniks have average charactration and accommodance, and variable but never inordinately high accelerance. Peasant hyporigidniks, I call them: they form rigidniplexes that are little more than habits sensible for their position in life, and aren’t so much locked into them as too unimaginative to try anything else.
In the past, I’ve often hypothesized a kind of “pararigidniplex”–a rigidniplex formed by freewenders, who are the sanest, most intelligent people. I now have a new name for it: “wendrijniplex.” It’s like any other rigidniplex except for its origin, which is not caused by a person’s chronically having too much charactration and too little accommodance, but by a freewender’s having in a single instance, too much charactration and too little accommodance, his enthusiasm for a discovery of his over-riding his critical sense, and his continued pleasure in the rigidniplex it brings into being, being too great for him to break ties with it. So it blights his intellectual existence every bit as unfortunately as a rigidnik’s rigidniplex blights his.
To be thorough, I will remind my readers (including myself) that everyone forms knowleplexes, which are mental constructs each of which provides an inter-related understanding of some fairly large subject like biology, for a layman, or the biology of mammals, or of one species of mammals, for a biologist. A rational (although not necessarily valid) knowleplex is a “verosoplex.” Offhand, I would say there are two kinds of irrational knowleplexes: rigidniplexes and–another new term coming up–”ignosoplex,” or a knowleplex which is basically too inchoerent to be classified as either rational or irrational. It’s the result of ignorance. We all have many of them, each concerning a field we are “ignosophers” about–not completely ignorant of, but not sufficiently knowledgeable about to be able to form a verosoplex–or any kind of working rigidniplex.
I’m well aware that most readers will find the above the product of an ignosopher. It isn’t. It’s just a pop-psychology–level very rough draft of one small knowleplex the among many making up my knowleplex of temperament, which in turn is a small knowleplex among the many making up my theory of intelligence, which is just a small portion of my theory of epistemology, which is a not-small portion of my theory of the human psychology. Or so I keep telling myself.
Entry 229 — Reactions to my Cryptographiku
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
It turns out I was wrong when I claimed no one had ever discussed my cryptographiku in print: Geof Huth had. I found that out in his response to the two new ones I’ve posted here a week or so and two weeks ago or so. What he insightfully said on each occasion is now archived in this blog’s “Pages” under “Discussions of Bob Grumman’s Poetry.”
I’m still bumbling, although yesterday I did finish the book review I had to do. I’m letting it sit today. Tomorrow, I’ll give it a once-over and release it. I’m not up to writing anything worthwhile here, so am posting the reactions at Geof’s blog to what he said about my latest cryptographiku, and my response to those comments:
Entry 203 — Random Thoughts
Friday, August 27th, 2010
Random thoughts today because I want to get this entry out of the way and work on my dissertation on the evolution of intelligence, or try to do so, since I’m still not out of my null zone, unless I’m slightly out but having trouble keeping from falling back into it.
First, two new Grummanisms: “utilinguist” and “alphasemanticry.” The first is my antonym for a previous coinage of mine, “nullinguist,” for linguist out to make language useless; ergo, a utilinguist is a linguist out to make language useful. By trying to prevent “poetry” from meaning no more than “anything somebody thinks suggests language concerns” instead meaning, to begin with, “something constructed of words,” before getting much more detailed, for example.
“Alphasemanticry” is my word for what”poetry” should mean if the nullinguists win: “highest use of language.” From whence, “Visual Alphasemanticry” for a combination of graphics and words yielding significant aesthetic pleasure that is simultaneously verbal and visual.”
I popped off today against one of Frost’s “dark” poems, or maybe it is a passage from one of them: “. . . A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead”–the kind academics bring up to show Frost was Important, after all. “Wow,” I said, “Wow, he confronts death! He must be major! “ I then added, “Frost is in my top ten all-time best poets in English that I’ve read but not for his Learic Poems.”
James Finnegan then corrected me, stating (I believe) that the poem didn’t confront death but showed its effects. I replied, “Okay, a poem about the effect of death on two people. What I would call a wisdom poem. I’m biased against them. I like poems that enlarge my world, not ones that repeat sentiment about what’s wrong with it, or difficult about it. Frost knew a lot about reg’lar folks, but I never learned anything from him about them that I didn’t already know. In other words, I’m also somewhat biased against people-centered poems. But mostly, I don’t go to poems to learn, I go to them for pleasure.”
I would add that I’m an elitist, believing with Aristotle that the hero of a tragedy needs to be of great consequence, although I disagree with him that political leaders are that, and I would add that narrative literature of any kind requires either a hero or an anti-hero (like Falstaff) of great consequence.
I’m not big on poems of consolation, either.
Entry 146 — Discussing Mathematics and Poetry
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino has been blogging about mathematics and poetry at his Eratio blog. When he told me about it on the phone yesterday, I said I’d check it out, which I’ve now done. I left my first comment on it. Fortunately, for once I cut what I said before hitting the button telling his blog to accept it, for my post got rejected. I’ll try in a little while to post it again. Meanwhile I want to post it here, to make sure it’s somewhere, and because maybe one of my two regular visitors doesn’t also read Gregory, or misses posts to it because it’s irregular, which is my excuse.
Hi, Gregory. I’ve decided to tear into your commentary on mathematics and poetry Very Slowly, one idea at a time, to facilitate coherence.
I’ll begin with your statement that “Already (‘mathematical sentence’) (you’re) thinking analogically.”
This is where you and I first disagree, for (as revealed in our long & interesting phone conversation of yesterday) I believe numerals and mathematical symbols are part of our verbal language, just as, in my opinion, typographical symbols for punctuation or to abbreviate are. The mathematical symbol, “+,” for instance, is just a different way of writing, “plus,” or “&.” It therefore follows that for me, a mathematical equation is a literal sentence differing from unmathematical sentences only in the words in it. “a – b = c,” for instance, is a very simple sentence and not significantly different from, “Mary cried when she lost her lamb.”
Obviously, it’s just a case of your opinion versus mine, but I think acceptance of my opinion makes more sense, because it keeps thing more simple than your does. I would say that what most people mean by “words” are “general words,” while words like “sineA” or “=” are “specialized words” or mathematical words–like punctuation marks.
I think in my linguistics, these “words” are all called “textemes,” But it’s been a while since I read Grumman on the matter, so I’m not sure.
Hey, I found a glossary in which I define many terms like “texteme.” It’s not a word but a typographical symbol: “any textual symbol, or unified combination of textual symbols–letters, punctuation marks, spaces, etc.–that is smaller than a syllable of two or more letters: e.g., ‘g,’ ‘&h(7:kk,’ ‘GH,’ ‘jd.’” I coined the term for discussion of various odd kinds of symbols and symbol-combinations like some of those among my examples that not infrequently occur in visual or infraverbal poems.
So, I don’t have a special term for word, as I define it. Yet.
To continue my argument in favor of my take on mathematical expression as an extension of verbal expression, not something different in kind, I would saimply ask what is special about mathematical symbols that should require us to think of them as elements of a special kind of expression? They do nothing that ordinary verbalization can’t do, although they do it more clearly, compactly and elegantly.
Graphs would be mathematical expression–a form of visio-conceptual expression, as is written music. Chemical diagrams but not chemical notation. . . .
I don’t see that there’s any difference between the syntax of mathematical expression (other than graphs and probably other similar things I’m not into Math enough to think of right now) and normal verbal expression. There’s no inflection, I don’t think, in mathematical expression. Which is a triviality.
Conclusion: we need a carefully formed taxonomy of human modes of expression.
Entry 115 — The Knowleplex
Saturday, February 27th, 2010
The knowleplex is simply a chain of related memories–A.B.C.D.E., say–or a knowledge-chain. It is what we remember whenever we are taught anything, either formally at school (when our teacher tells us Washington is the capital of the United States, for instance) or informally during day-to-day experience (when we see our friend Sam has a pet cat).
There are three kinds: rigiplexes, flexiplexes and feebliplexes, the name depending on the strength of the knowleplex. One is too strong, one too weak, and the other just right. If we let A.B.C.D.E. stand for “one plus two is three,” then a person with a rigiplex “inscribed” with that, asked what one plus two is, will quickly answer, “three.” But if asked what one plus four is, he will give the same answer, because his rigiplex will be so strong it will become wholly active due only to “one plus.”
On the other hand, a person with a feebliplex “inscribed” with “one plus two is three,” asked what one plus two is, will answer “I dunno,” because his feebliplex will be so weak, even “one plus two is” won’t be enough for his knowlplex to become active. Ditto when asked what one plus four is. But the person whose knowleplex is just right–whose knowleplex is a flexiplex, that is–will answer the first question, “three,” and the second, “I dunno.”
Needless to say, this overview is extremely simplified. Even “one plus two is three” will form a vastly more complicated knowleplex than A.B.C.D.E. The strength of a given knowleplex will vary, too, sometimes a lot, depending on the circumstances when it is activated. And each kind of knowleplex will vary in strength, some feebliplexes being almost as strong as a flexiplex, for example. In fact, a feebliplex can, in time, become a rigiplex. For the purposes of this introduction to knowleplexes, however, all this can be ignored.
Entry 110 — The Three Varieties of Rhyme
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
I’ve come up with new terms for two of the three kinds of rhyme in my poetics. One is Chyme-Rhyme for standard rhyme (e.g., “bat/cat”). The other is Rhyle-Rhyme for the kind of rhyme I’ve called various names, “Backward Rhyme,” being the most frequent (e.g. “bat/badge”). My name for the third kind of rhyme in my poetics is Rim-Rhyme, the perfect name coined many years ago for it (e.g. “bat/bet”).
The new names follow the logic of “Rim-Rhyme” by demonstrating the sound of the kind of rhyme they name, but not the construction, as “Rim-Rhyme” does. The “Chyme” of regular rhyme seems fitting, too. As for “Rhyle,” well, it’s a kind of rhyme that riles traditionalists, and I couldn’t come up with a better “rhy-consonant” word to use.
I should haven’t to explain why I consider all three of my kinds of rhyme valid rhymes, but while some accept rim-rhyme because of Wilfred Owen, I think no one has accepted rhyle-rhyme. But it seems sensible to call such a combination a rhyme rather than an alliteration/assonance. And it seems sensible to call any pair or great number of unidentical syllables sharing two sounds to be rhymes.
your reading of Grumman’s ‘cryptographiku’ reminds me of something Derek Attridge once said about reading a work:
“We must not allow the resonances of the term “work” to echo too strongly, however; although we may admire the time and effort that has gone into an invention, what we respond to when we respond creatively and responsibly is the enduring event of invention that the labor made possible, not to the labor as such—to the work as working rather than as worked.” (“The Singularity of Literature”)
9:15 PM, September 18, 2010
.#####
eagle
epic
eagle
epic
gl
pic
uh
all around the world
color of flags, color of shit
failing fuckedup empire
1:31 PM, September 19, 2010
I like-wise “pin it on”
the/an event
however: need that event
(irregardless of the/any punctuation or absence of any other
‘signification’) be an “enduring event” which we can reduce to mere mathematics and mathematical symols?
-K.
1:37 PM, September 19, 2010
Thanks for the good comment, Conrad. I think speaking of a poem as a work can have on good side: it reminds the poem’s engagent that it wasn’t just thrown together (although these were!), so he should try not to dismiss it too easily.
Thanks for your thoughts, too, B-R–but your second interpretation is, I’m afraid, wrong. There is, so far as I can see, only one main “solution” for either poem that fits. For instance, in the first, each line should consist of one one-letter word followed by a four-letter word.
One idea I hope to follow up on is some coded text that spells one thing according to one code and another, legitimately, according to another.
Finally, K. I think you’ve hit on a central idea of each of the poems. While I don’t see anything “mere” about mathematics, in these poems, I was trying to show events not enduring–I’d rather say, enduring for only a moment–but dying from letters through numerals to nothingness.
Anyway, I’m happy that thoughts like yours occur to someone encountering my gadgets.
–Bob