Algebra has a poetry of its own.
Poetry has an algebra of its own.
1) How is poetry like an algebra equation?
2) What is the ration and proportion of poetry?
3) What is your definition of “earned abstraction”? How does a poem earn the use of abstract concepts and words?
When Jake Lorfing and I were talking yesterday about some long ago work I felt would be worthy writing material, he said, “But I don’t remember anything; it’s too long ago.” I suggested he do a Sensory Scan. You can do this, too. 1) Take each sense in turn: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. 2)…
A foot of snow atop our bluff: Evergreen Heights, Jersey Township, SW Illinois. Mother, that which you filled and then emptied, we fill again as best we can. Your chair hold us at the wheelhouse hub, yet a glance windowward unfolds and holds worlds beyond. This morning’s world insulated in a snowy rug. Cardinal families…
Bamboo by Jane Hirshfield From “Orion” What exists wants to persist. Even the knock of bamboo on bamboo spilled outward continues. And you who have lived—restless, ambitious, aggrieved. A Walter, a Shirley, a Tim. A Carlos, a Teisha, a Haavo. Do not think it unchanged, this world you are leaving.
Vegetable Love in Texas by Carol Coffee Reposa Texas Poetry Calendar: 2008 Farmers say There are two things Money can’t buy: Love and homegrown tomatoes. I pick them carefully. They glow in my hands, shimmer Beneath their patina of warm dust Like talismen. Perhaps they are. Summer here is a crucible That melts us down…
When you receive a “Listenback” from a critique on your work, what can you do next? Use the feedback you’ve received to set up exercises to try things out. Use this releasing question: What other poems are inside this poem? Editing and re-writing are like sculpting.
Laurie Nienhaus is an author, playwright, witty blogger, and public speaker living on Fort Myers Beach, Florida. She describes her blog “No Cobwebs Here” as “The Place for the Stuff Flitting About in My Head.” See three other fascinating online drawing rooms below where Laurie brings back civility and graciousness. –JGR ______________________ Not Letting Me…
The balance between art and science can be elusive.
Here is my definition, applicable to this post:
Physics: The truth that is matter.
Art: The matter that is truth.
Eden,
Love your connection of how to connect science and art. As always, your wisdom is a welcome addition to the village.
Janet Riehl
Yes, Janet, when it comes to any form of dogma (art or science), the following observation pretty much tells us the whole story.
“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer,
to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
—from The Psychology of Science by Abraham H. Maslow
The indelible memories of our lives are felt, not thought.
Eden,
Your chapter in “An Artist Empowered” titled: Art & Physics: the upshot being this: you can’t measure God with a ruler” is a good reference in this discussion.
Janet
When I told my son, the economist, that I’d always figured him for an artist (music, poetry) he said, “Mom when you get up high enough in math, it has a certain beauty and elegance.” We (being Western culture) have long mused about the music of the spheres, and Hesse’s brilliant discussions of music and math all make such an argument as well.
Now for the algebra of poetry, what comes to mind is the solving for the unknown. An experience that resonates more than it should, an elusive motif, a pattern of words or sounds, are always central to poetry. If there is no unknown, you shouldn’t write a poem (and there is no algebra without an unknown to solve for).
Earned abstraction, I’ll be interested to see more of what people say about this. I still generally tune out of abstraction in poetry, but I am now seeing some limited times when the abstraction is so unexpected, yet so inevitible that it seems almost as concrete as the thud of a door being broken into.
Thanks for getting me into this discussion on an otherwise Monday, Monday.
Thanks, Mary Ruth, for your perceptive response. It’s good to have an online discussion about things that matter to us as writers. I always love the boundary between things that often seem in different camps.
Janet Riehl