As someone with years of rigorous mathematical training in computation and proof, I liked the idea of building a poem around an equation. Yet, 26 Points to Specify didn't use the equation in as meaningful a manner as I expected. The vague idea of each element adding constraints to an equation makes sense in describing a character in words and numbers. Yet the constraints themselves didn't match the words as well as I expected them to. The behaviors of mathematical operations would have lent themselves nicely to add meaning to the words that came before each.
There were a few that sort of made sense though. When I consider the religious holidays, "I ask for" is moved into the denominator and this religious aspect is placed in the numerator. But there were others that seemed to just be for show, such as They have pulled out and the corresponding addition of a constant k. The date of my birth dividing "My fortune" by x...
I like this concept. There is a lot of information one could draw from closely examining each additional variable, which does make the poem intriguing. My main issue with the way it was carried out is that the math seems to have been taken for granted by the poet. That idea itself adds an even more interesting dimension, so maybe it was intentional.
-Hannah
I agree, Hannah, when I first looked at those equations I thought I would have to brush up on my skills in order to find meaning, but I didn't. Which I guess is good for the sake of time, and I liked the visual component they added to the poem. Something I just though of including science into poetry, if one had to have actually solved equations to gain access to the meaning, the poetry becomes exclusive, not letting in those who might not get science or math.(I am not speaking of myself, for as much as I complain I am fairly good at both science and math) And I do not think I like that one bit.
ReplyDeleteHannah,
ReplyDeleteI can truly tell you are a math major. When you stated your observation, I could not help but look back at the variables in each equation and see how they correlate to the overall poem. I think this in turn made me enjoy to the poem more than I even thought I did before! Moreover, I really enjoyed the way the author incorporated an unconventional method of telling a story. I really hope we do an exercise similar to this in class on Wednesday.