> Ah, I liked David's list too, not necessarily agreeing with all
> of it, but even then,
> a sort of wry chuckle. But I think it should be noted that while
> poets may grant
> poetry to mathematicians or computer experts or sociologists,
> that granting is
> seldom extended from the other side. Poetry is an engagement with
> language,
> but there are other engagements with language that are not
> necessarily poetry
> or even grant it a limited existence, I know one physicist who is
> interested in
> poetry but then he is married to a poet, and we all know how that
> goes, or as
> this very same poet has said 'taking an interest in something is
> not the same as
> being interested,"
>
> Best,
>
> Rebecca
>
> Rebecca Seiferle
> www.thedrunkenboat.com

i don't think it's a matter of courtesy, rebecca. if one writes some
significant mathematics, it will likely be published and mathematicians will
have some sense of its relative significance, usually. the arguments are
usually verifiable or disprovable by standard logic, if one can follow the
argument.

in poetry, there's being open to the experience of a piece, and there's also
a host of other considerations. does the work open a new vein? is it an
artery or a wee vessel? is it 'news that stays news'? does it 'bear witness'
in a compelling way to compelling events or conditions, etc? if it is
celebrated, who celebrated it and why? what does the poet generally 'stand
for' and is that what is going on here? is it a literary fashion statement
or is there more to it? did it cause one to see god? or someone else equally
interesting? is it of any consequence to how one goes on from here? did it
manage to articulate or suggest things that one knew to be true but one had
been frustrated in attempting to speak or write about them? what sort of
context has it been placed in? why? how does the context feed back in to the
poem? how does the poem address the context? how far does the consciousness
extend? is it merciful? is it fucked up? how does it deal with that? is it
alive to its own existence? is it alive to my existence? does it have around
it the signs of care? what does it care about? what sort of engagement with
language is going on here? how deep does that run through other work?

in math, the value of a piece of work has mostly to do with what it sets out
to prove, and whether this is significant. the existence of 'undecidable
propositions' (propositions that cannot be proved true yet cannot be false).
the existence of different orders of infinity. the existence of problems for
which no algorithms may compute the answer.

whereas in poetry, while the propositions and statements are important, it's
more a matter of the above sorts of considerations. for me, anyway.

it's fascinating, to me, that the theory of computation that mathematicians
constructed/discovered on the way to making the computer is so deeply
concerned with language, the formal properties of language. one could
approach it pragmatically and say, well, during the industrial era, many
machines were made and people always eventually wanted to make them more
flexible, which comes down to a matter of language, ie, making them
programmable. and lo and behold, we then arrive at deep questions and issues
concerning not only hard machines, but soft machines too. via this synthesis
of concern with language and number. that changes not only how we view the
machine, but ourselves. ourselves as machines imbued with language of the
light fantastic.

ja
http://vispo.com