20 February 2004. Suddenly, I'm feeling enthusiastic about my Paint Shop endeavours. Yesterday, I made another null rough draft of a mathemaku after thinking I would just make graphics, but today I used the program to work on two visual poems I'm collaborating on. One is with John M. Bennett, the other with Scott Helmes--with one with Kathy Ernst I'm waiting for material from her to begin. I worked so long with Paint Shop, that I've decided to skip the further comments on what makes for superior poems, etc., and just post the in-progress collaborations, with the beginning version of each preceding the version I've added to. The first two are the Bennett/Grumman collaboration, the second two the Helmes/Grumman. I'll ad what I did yesterday for full disclosure.

The final one is in the running for the worst of of mathemaku-in-progress I've posted in my blog, I'm sure. I felt inspired when I saw John's wonderful frame. I went obvious, with images of what might be inside a sleep. I'm quite proud of it. "Pussy" is the very first dirty word I've used in a mathemaku. I first had "vagina" but decided that was way too high class. Not that I don't consider this poem as exalted as anything else I've worked on. I really do think that; this one has a wonderful range of "baseness" and "ethereality," I think. But I believe I'll redo my contribution; I now think I botched it by marginalizing his "sle p." (What a great frame to add to a collaboration in John provided, by the way!)

I loved the starter Scott sent me, too. I immediately thought I'd divide something into some portion of one of the alphabets. To make the operation a little more visually interesting, I decided to enlarge the section I divided into. I thought I'd leave most of the other terms in the example to Scott, but felt obligated to do at least one more. Because he makes his living as an architect, I decided on a rectangle with its dimensions shown. I labeled the length of the rectangle I made for the quotient "23," then had my one big inspiration: to carry on my use of verbal images for mathematical quantities by having "moonlight" as the measure of the rectangle's width. But 23 times (moonlight) seemed too straightforward to me, if you can believe it, so I made the 23 algebraic with an "xy." A short time later, I thought a window or door might complicate the rectangle interestingly. It would need a measure, too--hence, the heart, which is even more surrealistically wrong/right than "moonlight." Actually, once I was done, I realized the distance from one corner to the opening ought to have its measure indicated, too. I guess Scott will have to do that, if he wants to. Except for the remainder line, a scribbly crossed-out 3 and a greenish splotch, that was it for my first engagement with the work. I'm eager to see what Scott now does with it, and if I'll have to add more. I suspect I will.