To be accurate, this is just half the poem. The second half consists of multiplications of 5882352941176470 that ends with "5882352941176470 17 99999999999999999." I like the passage I've shown in full by itself better than the extended version, though, because it is more pure, and easier to grasp (though it took me a while to realize how remarkably constant the products are (and the columns formed when those sums are stacked!).

The interesting question about this for me is why I believe there's something importantly different about Kostelanetz's presentation of his numbers from some high school nerd's telling me about them. In the latter case, I get the mathematical thrill of what 142857 does when multiplied. Kostelanetz's presentation gives me the same thrill . . . but it also breaks his artifact out of the mathematical zone it would otherwise exclusively inhabit. One can then, perhaps, experiences it sagaceptually (i.e., in the narrative-seeking part of one's mind) and be bowled over by it as a symbol of abrupt closure--when the dutifully repeating 1's, 4's, 2's, 8's, 5' and 7's suddenly STOP in 999999.

I also feel and see the rectangle of numbers as a machine, and machines fascinate me--the way they do things. The feeling of inevitability, of order, of things taking place correctly, forever. Chug chug. One need know be terrifically skilled at math to appreciate such a poem, but it seems to me one must have a special kind of sympathy for numbers and what they can do. And not be segreceptual--not be unable, that is, to experience an artwork in more than one part of one's brain at once. In this case, to experience it in one's mathematical awareness, sagaceptual awareness, and--well, perhaps proprieceptual awareness, or where one experiences one's muscle movements (in sympathy with a machine's), or in whatever visio-narrative awareness one experiences mechanism in. . . . And elsewhere, although right now I can think where one might experience it (richly).

Something that may interest only me and no one else in the world is the fact that Kostelanetz's poem will very probably not be experience in anyone's verbal awareness (although most will think about it verbally). So, by my criteria, it's hard to call it a poem--except by claiming that numbers are words. And as I write that, I realize that numbers are in my theory of psychology (and conventional theories, I'm pretty sure) "read" in one's reading center, which is a verbal sub-awareness.

To continue with my thinking out loud, I wonder how the mathematical center evolved. That'd be where we multiply and divide, etc. I wonder if we could do anything more mathematical than count before the invention of writing. The invention of mulitplication . . . wow!

Or maybe not. Maybe just "Me got three cows, you got three cows. Together we got six cows. Two three cows is same as six cows." Something like that. Major, at the time, and purely oral.