10 September 2005: Just poetry gossip today. Marcus got kicked out of New-Poetry, but I'm still there, barely. Kaz Mazlanka forwarded the last post we got from Marcus to me yesterday:
Marcus Bales wrote:
Take Grumman, for example. He lives in a culture that is largely math-,
poetry-, and grammar-phobic. So what does he do? He claims to write poems
by substituting math operands for English grammar. You have to know a good
deal about English grammar and mathematics to approach his poems at all ...
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Marcus misrepresents me again here, albeit not all that much. What I "claim" (he rarely believes I honestly state my aims as accurately as I can) is that I substitute non-mathematical matter, usually verbal, for mathematic terms in equations or the like. Another aim of mine, in my recent work, is to achieve something visually appealing, and verbally intriguing. To approach my mathemaku, one needs only to be able to read, appreciate color, and survive the Shock of the Different.
Kaz Maslanka wrote:
I really don't understand how you can say that one needs to know much about math to understand Bob's Mathemaku ... for Pete's sake the math is on the level of 7 and 8 year old children.
First, it's poetry -- most people don't read poetry in the first place; our culture is poetry-phobic. Most people don't want to have anything to do with anything that calls itself "poetry". To that add that most of the people who do read poetry have so little background in math and science that the level of 7 and 8 year old children is just barely within their grasp -
Marcus, Are you saying that the group of people (at New-Poetry) find division and multiplication just barely within their grasp?
Yes. After you've been on the list for a while (I was just kicked off for arguing with the moderator backchannel that Bob Grumman's and my exchanges are civil, while the moderator maintained that they were "toxic") you'll find what I mean.
but, more importantly, they react to the math symbols themselves as most people react to anything calling itself "poetry": with a sort of phobic reaction. To that add that the math operands purport to take the place of ordinary English grammar, of which most people know very little except for "what sounds right" to them, with the result that they don't see the connection between the two systems because they're phobic about the math symbols and they can't identify the grammar principles the math operands purport to replace.
Maybe where you and possible others are having problems is trying to think there is some sort of replacement. There is no replacing of grammar. The math operations are in addition to what verbal grammar may be present. The use of math operations is no different than in a physics equation. Example: D = vt . distance is equal to velocity multiplied by time . what is important in our case it that distance is defined by this relationship of time and velocity being multiplied. It is the same in mathpo. Of course the average person will say that the former physics equation makes logical sense but Bob's poems do not make logical sense. That is because the average person doesn't understand the logical structure of metaphor. Metaphors do not make sense! Example: He is a Deer. This is total nonsense because "he" is a man and you are telling me he is a deer. Man = Deer.
I don't get it, we see metaphors in poetry all the time and no one has any problem but when we see it in a math equation all hell breaks loose. We mathpoets are trying to teach you a different but beautiful way of looking at mathematics. We are freeing mathematics from the boundaries of denotation and watching it bloom into connotation.
If you want to attack Bob's mathpo attack it for its content not its structure. There is nothing wrong with what Bob is doing.
To that add that apparently such things as "1/2 0 = c" are not intended as math operands at all but rather some sort of jejune symbol-play, so that even Grumman's purported use of math symbols to replace grammar is not operating, and you have just the sort of thing that ordinary people look at as bull.
If you want to say it is boring I can accept your opinion. But it is far from bull
Kaz Maslanka
http://www.kazmaslanka.com/kaz_maslanka_art_from_1990_to_2000.html
PS I find Nico Vassilakis' example more in the realm of vispo not mathpo. I find performing math
operations on text vispo and performing math operations on words (meanings) mathpo But I would
imagine Bob would disagree.
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I do. Nico's equation (really just part of a visual poem) does math, so I would call it mathematical SOMEthing. Mathematical vispo, I guess--but still a form of mathematical poetry. So math operations on words would be mathematical textpo. . . .
Nico's halving of O does do math on a meaning, though, since O is both zero and oh, and the product, c, is light.
As for Marcus's remarks, the "1/2 0 = c" is not "some kind of jejune symbol-play," but a mathematical equation. The c, which I may have forgotten to to explain in full in my entry on Nico's poem, is the product of one-half times O or 0 because the left half of O or 0 is (, or c."
I would grant that Marcus is somewhat right about the mathematical part of my current poetry being over the heads of the poetry-reading public, even though it's mostly (not entirely, since some of my mathemaku are algebraic, and one or two get into calculus and vectors) very elementary arithmetic, because of its context. Also, fully to appreciate my long division, one has to have a good understanding to long division, not just know how to use it.
Marcus's point, though, which is that my main intention (maybe my sole intention) is to make poetry that alientates ordinary folks is crap. My aim is to construct objects that seem to me beautiful, period. That means avoiding, as much as possible, that which has been done before since predictability is as much an enemy of beauty as obscurity. Unfortunately for me, I'm an artist, which means that much more is predictable, and much less (of my own work, at least) obscure to me than is predictable or obscure to laymen.
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