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26 February 2005: I had hoped to add to, even perhaps finish, my argument/agreement dyptich today, but had one of my many off days. (But I did get a lot of work done on the 5-minute presentation I'll be giving in Miami this coming Friday as part of some kind of reading that's going on. My presentation was done, but I didn't like the visio-technical quality of the images, so tried to improve it--not very well, alas.) I wasn't sure what I'd put in this entry until some kind soul sent me a comment on my blog, saying he enjoyed it and asking me to discuss, "(f)rom (my) perspective," the "differences between (my) work and (that of) Scott Helmes." Whew, that's a toughie. For one thing, Scott has done a lot of different things. For instance, he's lately be quite active in sound poetry, something I've done very little of. But I imagine my correspondent is interested in the two of us as mathematical poets. So, let me start with two samples of his mathematical poetry from his Non-Additive Postulations and Other Poems, the collection of his math poems that my Runaway Spoon Press published in 2000:
I love just about all of Scott's work, and consider his math poetry a main influence on mine. In fact, I thought I'd taken the idea of doing long division on words from him, but it's possible it was his square root "sheds" that got me into long division. Strangely, to me, while Scott is a terrific colorist, mainly in his elegant collages, he seems rarely to use color in his math poems. My mathemaku, on the other hand, are frequently littlem more than excuses for explorations of color. My math poems are generally visual in other ways, too. His are nearly entirely verbal. I suspect they're better focused than mine, as a result.
It would seem that I'm more (standardly) lyrical/sensual in my math poems than he is in his--and less cerebral (amazing as that may seem). His math poems lean more toward dada, I think, than mine. My impression is that most or all of his math poems are sets of equations, something I've done only once, that I can recall. In that respect, he's been more ambitious than I as a mathematical poet. On the other hand, mathematical poetry has become my main specialty as a poet whereas it's a lesser strain in his canon.
He does a lot of punning, and has a couple of very funny math poems on excretion, one on crapping and one on peeing (the terms used in them). I have not done more than one or two comic math poems (in spite of the fact that I've composed several cartoons and written a handful of farces).
I think we're similarly committed to mixing expressive modalities, and saying our worlds into being regardless of how little interest others take in them. If my work ends at the level of his, I'll consider my life to have been a success.
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