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May 14: Probably nothing is more gratifying to a serious poet than for a critic to take one seriously enough as a serious poet to write a full-scale serious essay on one's poetry. Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino did this a few years ago. You can read what he wrote about my mathemaku Here. I'm sure I've directed my readers to this essay before, but this version may be revised. In any case, I liked it better when I just read it than I remember having liked it before (although I liked it before). Gregory and I still have disagreements--enough to make it well worthwhile someday for me to write a response to his essay when I'm finally unlazy enough to do so. But I love the fact that he and I have, in so many ways, different understandings of my work--and I don't find much, if anything, about his understanding of them that I consider invalid.
One thing I'll say is that he's found out valuable things about my mathematical poetry that are new to me. One thing I'm annoyed with Gregory about, though, is that the following moronic passage (by a mathematics professor) is still accompanying Gregory's essay, uncommented on: "The transcendent intent of the mathemaku is perhaps better construed as allegory rather than actuality. The inclusion of flawed technical notations assumed to be unfamiliar to the reader is at best mysticism and at worst mere appropriation." My technical notations are not flawed, nor do I assume them to be unfamiliar to most of the people I've composed my mathemaku for (and I regret that some of them will be over the heads of many readers of serious poetry--although I also wish more of the really arcane symbols of mathematics were as second-nature to me as plus-signs, simple summation signs, and the other signs in my mathemaku, not to bamboozle readers but to achieve more intricate and fresh effects--the math professor will never appreciate). My poems are not allegorical, but metaphorical, and have little if anything to do with mysticism.
I'm pretty sure I've said all this before here--and said something like it to Gregory, which is why I'm annoyed with Gregory. He should remove the passage, or give my response to it in a footnote, along with my demand that the professor explain why my technical notations are flawed.
Okay, not much of an entry. More than I expected to write today, due to my weariness and null-brainedness. I was going to do no more than list the "clude" words I could think of--because I happened suddenly to think how much I like them yesterday, when thinking about using "include" centrally in a poem. My favorites are "include" and "conclude." There are also "occlude," "seclude" (another big favorite), "exclude" (a very very awful one!), "preclude." No "disclude." Or "aesthclude." There must be several more but I can't think of any. Tomorrow, "trude" words. No, never mind. For some reason, I have no interest in "trude" words.
Forgive my crass capitalism, but I've decided to advertise my Otoliths book, April to the Power of the Quantity Pythagoras Times Now, daily for a while. Maybe forever, if no one buys a copy. You can read about it at Lulu. It will be available for the PRE-PUBLICATION price just $21.45, $3.50 less than it will cost in a week of two when it will be officially launched! Please, someone buy a copy!
Later note: the prices is actually about $30--because Lulu charges extra for postage and handling, which I didn't know when I wrote the above. My apologies.
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