The other comment was a near-perfect set-up for a condescending explanatory retort: "most people would think you are attributing way too much to this poem." It was in response to my essay of 32 January on Karl Kempton's "some roman math, c ionz." "Most people?" Who's concerned with what most people would think? Most people aren't able to appreciate conventional poetry, much less a burstnorm poem like Karl's. I was sure, however, that no serious aestheriencer of poetry would think I was attributing anything to the poem that wasn't in it.

Well, after looking over my essay, I still don't think I attributed anything to the poem that wasn't in it, but I have to admit that I didn't supply left as many explanatory details as I should have. So whoever sent me the comment (and I suspect an old friend of mine) was probably right. Here's the entry, again:

On a Fragment of Latin, Ionized

                         some roman math, c ionz

                         Listen
                         l
                          is
                            ten 
                         timez 
                         5
                          iz 
                         the
                         number 
                         of
                         chanj 
                         loose 
                         and 
                         klinking 
                         pocket 
                         full
                         of 
                         pennyz

When in the poem above Karl Kempton repeats his first word in
steps distributed through three lines, a reader not familiar with
his work might be puzzled. Of course, the sentence that the poet
has converted his small word to should soon become apparent. But
that sentence makes no sense--the "1" that Kempton has punned
out of the letter,. "I," can't equal ten.  Is his stunt only
clever, then?  I say no, for to me it buoyantly shows, even as it
asserts, the multiplicative power of both "listen," the word, and
listen, the act: if only we listen, truly listen--not only to
text (on paper or elsewhere) but into it, down to its very
letters, and to the cracks between them--our world wil increase
tenfold.

No, wait. Not tenfold but fiftyfold! Or so the poem goes on to
state, whereupon the poetic rightness of Kempton's claim suddenly
marries the counter-poetic rightness of a roman numeral l's
equalling fifty.

Through this rich interplay of the intuitive and the rational,
the poem draws us into the concrete heard of "loose and klinking
chanj" (like the loose and clinking letters in Kempton's
repetition of "listen")--and at the same time into the high
generality of change, as a pocketful of pennies becomes a boy's
magico-economic version of the magico-aesthetic transformative
device that words and letters are in the pockets of poets. Thus
does Kempton's trinket deepen dozens of colors beyond mere
cleverness into a full-scale lyrical celebration o� boyhood,
coins, letters, Rome, mathematics, English--and the secret of
listening things into poetry.

The key to coming up with a reading like mine is the juxtaphor. That's what I call an implied metaphor of the kind common to visual poems--and haiku. More than one justaphor, for instance, is in the famous haiku by Basho:

Now, I'm not saying "listen" is a juxtaphor for the fact that l is 10 times 5 because that would not make a good deal of sense. What I believe is that "listen" is here acting as a juxtaphor for the mathematical act of multiplication. That allows me to read the poem both as "listen" and what your hear will be multiplied, and as "listen (and) loose and clinking change in a boy's pocket equals (or "iz the number of) a multiplication operation." I could also put it as "listening equals loose and clinking pennies in a boy's pocket multiplying into magic." That, without these details, is about how my essay has it.

Where does the boy come in? Well, I automatically included him in the poem when first aestheriencing it due to my own boyhood memories of pocketfuls of change during a time when fifty cents was a whole lot of money. I consider the inclusion more than a subjective whim on my part, though. The change has to be in someone's pockets, and girls tend to keep change in pocketbooks, or did in the era this poem has to be coming out of (since pennies no longer have much poetry now). The change could have been in an adult's pocket, but I think it much more likely that a boy would be aware of the sound, and feel, of change in his pocket than an adult.

Something I left out of my essay that is pertinent is the poem's title, "some roman math, c ionz." The last word in this, "c ionz," contributes much to the poem that follows. Indeed, it is a fine little poem by itself, for it metaphors coins scrambled and separated--and acting as charged particles, "wanderers" (as "ions" are in Greek, I believe) and bearers of change. According to Kempton, the number 5 is important in numerology as the number associated there with change.

I now see that, strictly speaking, my representing the multiplication of the coins by the act of listening by ten or fifty is invalid. Suffice it to say that listening is shown in this poem to be able significantly to multiply experience. What specific number can multiply experience by doesn't matter--though five, ten and fifty wold have to be considered possibilities.

There, if I still have convinced whomever wrote me that what I found in Kempton's poem is plausibly there, I hope I haven't too confusingly failed to. At any rate, I learned something.

COMMENTS

Use the box below to respond to this entry. Negative feedback is especially welcome. It will get to me anonymously, so you need have no fear it will result in my using my immense influence to wreck your literary career, if you have one. On the other hand, if you want to hear back, please include your e.mail address with your message.    --Bob