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30 May 2004. On Friday, when I left for Atlanta, I somehow managed to leave behind a carton of books published by my Runaway Spoon Press intended for the table the APG was going to have for publishers at the eyedrum event I wrote about for yesterday's entry. Apparently it contained the two solitextual poems I had chosen for the reading that was to end the event. When I couldn't find them Saturday morning, the day of the event, I hastily threw together a brief essay, so I'd have something to read. Here it is, slightly modified in spots:
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. . . so tonight, I'll have to do a lecture. Its subject will be a poem I thought of in bed last night and sketched out when I got up this morning. It's a mathematical poem, by wihich I very fastidiously mean a poem that performs some mathematical operation, not just a poem with numbers or math terms in it, or a poem about math.
The key to it is a zero which I use as an exponent. This goes back some 30 years to my very first, or second, math poem, I've long since forgotten which. Anyway, an exponent in math, for those of you who never had algebra, or have forgotten, is a little number (or term) you put to the upper right of another number (or term) to indicate that the latter is to be multimplied by itself a number of times equal to the exponent's value minus one--unless the exponent is zero. 2 with an exponent of three, for instance, means 2 times 2 times x, or 8.
A zero exponent reduces the term it is with to one--which brings us back to my first or second poem. In it, I used zero as exponent with the word, "couple." The idea was to do a variation on the old cliche about a man and a woman becoming one through the sex act. I like to think my poem was the world's first mathematical pornographic poem.
This morning, the zero returned when I was thinking about, of all things, what one plus one is. An ordinary numeral one times an ordinary numeral one equals an ordinary numeral one. But what about a number one time oh en e? Or a black numeral one times a grey and black numeral one? This last question gave me my poem: black numeral one times grey and black numeral one equals tiny black numeral one--with an enormous abstract-expressionistically colored zero as its exponent. This is a mathematically correct equation but one that I hope suggests that one can mean hugely more emotionally and sensually than what it means mathematically.
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When I read this, I had trouble with one of my insertions, so the result at the point was probably incoherent. I muffed a word or two elsewhere. I don't think I looked up from my paper once. Not a great performance. But now a few more people have more to connect my work to than a name, which is always a good thing, I think.
Afterwards, I realized something pretty obvious: when dealing with ones, an exponent of one will work as well as an exponent of zero. Using the one will simplify the drawing of the poem since it won't take up as much space as a zero would. In fact, I now believe I'll have my product a small black number one with an exponent of one that, in turn, has an exponent of one--that, in turn has an exponent one, and so on through the top of the page. Each exponent one will be larger than the previous one. Maybe a dumb idea, but I'm looking forward to making the poem tomorrow, when I'm back home, or the next day.
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