What does the human mind ordinarily want most? It wants to understand what it does not understand. And what does the human mind customarily do to achieve this goal? It works away—sometimes for only a second or two, sometimes for years—until it understands. What does the mind have then? What it wanted? No. What it has is an understanding of what it now understands. What it wanted was to understand what it did not understand. I suggest that, by giving us the capacity casually, effortlessly, to accept ‘The sheep's in the meadow’ as self-evidently distressing news, ‘Little Boy Blue’ does something comparable to the impossible: it gives us understanding of something that remains something we do not understand.
Booth continues throughout his book to give detailed examples of precisely how great poems provide us with this simultaneous sense of both understanding and not understanding what we just read. Though it can be achieved through numerous tactics (cataloged in handbooks of literary criticism under a variety of terms), ultimately all of these varieties of figurative language and poetic thought work in service of the experience of simultaneously understanding and not understanding.
Unlike interactive software, poetry does not take user input. It does not actually give the reader a choice, only the infinite illusion of choice crafted through allusion, implication, reference, rhyme, nonsensical meaning, seductive sounds and rhythms, and a multitude of other techniques that tell the mind there is one thing going on, but also simultaneously—in subtext—myriad others.
This varied subtext is one glimmer of the sparkling halo around poetry that leads many to believe it can't possibly resemble a calculated procedural process. In the creative act of writing poetry, that may well be true—great writing is often inspired, not calculated. But when we read poetry, under the assumptions we made above, the poem-program quite simply runs.
All the intangible sensibilities a poem communicates, with the help of centuries of collective cultural influences on the subtle and submerged meanings of words and their composition together as, do provide the illusion innumerable layers from which we could pick and choose to find new meaning. However, in the end, we do not follow any one meaning, but rather all of them at once, arriving always at the same final line of the poem.
Though we may shade and color the reading with new experience or new analysis, in the end the reason the poem attracts us never changes, alters or fades. At best, we simply unpack that primary impetus through rereading, contemplation, and study.
Likewise, the same elements of attraction work almost identically on those who are culturally similar to us. These elements must have worked the same effect on the author herself in the act writing (for “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader").[vi] Therefore, a great poem can express something even more profound the so-called message the poet; the poem can communicate an essentially human experience.
Conflating poetry and code challenges the assumption that poetry is a purely subjective domain, merely “a matter of taste.” The promise of communicating a meaningful experience in a reasonably predictable way, not unlike software running on a machine, is the promise of great poetry. Yet this communication is not the simple prosaic telling of the same thought over and over. It is instead an act of thinking in poetry, akin to sounding a tuning fork in the collective consciousness and watching as those similarly attuned begin to vibrate. The object of art evokes a response, and the response itself is the art.
The message of Poetry Code is that there do exist foundational common principles governing how great poetry, like great software, executes to magnificent effect. This does not imply a cookie-cutter formula for success in writing poetry, however. One need only look at how forms (and lack of forms) of poetry have evolved over the decades to conclude that in poetry, as in the Perl programming language, “There's more than one way to do it.” (That is, in fact, the motto.)[vii]
Postmodernism has ushered in a recent emphasis on subjectivity, either encouraging readers to draw disparate conclusions from the same body of work or, conversely, encrypting a single meaning in the work and presenting it to the reader like a puzzle. Unfortunately, both approaches necessarily limit the universality of the artistic experience.
Acknowledging the psychological and cultural contexts of poetry as more remarkably similar to a software operating system than it would appear at first glance leads us back to a more universal and accessible form of art. Thus the message for poetry found in light-speed calculations of ones and zeros is actually an inherently human one.
Endnotes i ActiveState Programmer Network. Perl Haiku Contest.
aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Perl/Haiku/
ii Urban Dictionary.
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Code+Poet iii Peake, Robert. “What Poems and Code Have in Common."
www.robertpeake.com/plugin/tag/Code+Poet Ibid. “More Thoughts on
Poems and Code."
iv Bloom, Harold. 2004. The Art of Reading Poetry. York: HarperCollins.
v Booth, Stephen. 1998. Precious Nonsense: The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's Epitaphs
on his Children, and Twelfth Night. Berkeley: University Of California Press.
vi Frost, Robert. 1939. Introduction. The Collected Poems of Robert Frost. York:
Henry Holt.
vii “Perl Overview.” Perl version 5.8.8 documentation.
perldoc.perl.org/perl.html
[Back to Table of Contents]
Contributor Biographies
Charlie Anders (www.charlieanders.com) is the author of Choir Boy, won a Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award. She's also co-editor of She's Such A Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology And Other Nerdy Stuff. publishes other magazine (www.othermag.org) and organizes the award-winning Writers With Drinks reading series. Her writing has appeared in McSweeneys.net, Pindeldyboz.com, Salon.com, San Francisco Chronicle, Paraspheres: New Wave Fabulist Fiction, Strange Horizons, ZYZZYVA Space & Time.
Joshua Babcock's story “Compromise” appeared in Kenoma Magazine his “Tome of the Time-Siege” won second place in Gom Publishing's The Best New Sci-Fi & Fantasy for 2004 . His story “Angst and the Armageddon” is upcoming in Forgotten Worlds. ock is a graduate of Vassar College and teaches at a school for students with dyslexia. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and six cats. He can be reached at [email protected].
Rusty Barnes lives in Revere, MA with his family. His stories have appeared in journals like Pindeldyboz, SmokeLong Quarterly, Red Rock Review.
Bruce Boston holds the distinctions of having appeared in more issues of Asimov's SF than any other author, and of having coined the word “cybertext.” Visit hometown.aol.com/bruboston.
Lida Broadhurst lives in northern California with her husband and a fat orange tabby. She has had her poetry and short stories published extensively in the small press. work will appear in Mythic Delirium, Rogue Worlds, Bare Bone.
Benjamin Buchholz is a US Army Officer just recently returned from Iraq. His fiction and poetry have appeared widely in the last year or two at places like GoodFoot, Tarpaulin Sky, Identity Theory, MadHatters’ Review, Ghoti, MiPOesias, Opium, Planet Magazine. website, www.benjaminbuchholz.com, contains a few links and other oddities that you or your friends might find interesting.
David Bulley has published short fiction in Night Train, McSweeneys, Words & Images, Porcupine, Opium, many other venues. His novel, Weapon in Heaven, forthcoming from Cavern Press. He owns and operates Scrawl: The Writer's Asylum, an online writer's community. www.STWA.net, www.DavidBulley.com
Chris Butler is the author of the novel Any Time Now (Wildside Press, 2001). His short fiction has been published by magazines such as Interzone Albedo One. ‘s website is at www.chris-butler.co.uk.
Sarah Coyne moved to Boston in 1999 from a lush forested town in southern New Hampshire. Since migrating south she has earned a BFA in illustration, almost adjusted to city life, and sold her work as 2-D fine art as well as illustrations applied to everyday items such as pillow
s, T-shirts, stationery, and bags. Sarah's artistic pursuits and obvious small-town heart of gold have found her many good friends, both human and animal. While missing the greenery of her childhood, Sarah has been making her adopted home a little cuter with her bright, lively illustrations and paintings of animals and other light fare while also honing her acerbic wit and dark sense of humor with a few more sinister subjects. Favorite media include oils, watercolors and acrylics on unfinished wood, decorative calico prints and large-scale canvases. Her work can be viewed at www.eggagogo.com and can be found at a number of stores and galleries in New England and beyond. Sarah can be contacted through her website.
Neil Davies was born in 1979 in the middle of England. He works in a university somewhere, and this is his first piece of published fiction.
Larry Dickison's art and cartoons have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Dark Fantasy, The Gate, Argonaut, Thin Ice. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.
William Doreski, Professor of English, Keene State College (New Hampshire), teaches creative writing, literary theory, and modern poetry. Born in Connecticut, he lived in Boston, Cambridge, and Arlington (MA) for many years, attended various colleges, and after a certain amount of angst received a Ph.D. from Boston University. After teaching at Goddard, Harvard, and Emerson colleges, he came to Keene State in . He has published several collections of poetry, most recently Sacra Via (Tatlock Publications, 2005) and Another Ice Age (Cedar Hill, 2006), and three critical studies, The Years of Our Friendship: Robert Lowell and Allen Tate (University Press of Mississippi, 1990), The Modern Voice in American Poetry (University Press of Florida, 1995), and Robert Lowell's Shifting Colors (Ohio University Press, 1999), and a textbook entitled How to Read and Interpret Poetry (Prentice-Hall). His critical essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many academic and literary journals, including The Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, The New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, The Antioch Review, Natural Bridge.
Errid Farland lives in Southern California and writes at a cluttered table where a candle burns to create an aura of serenity. Sometimes she accidentally catches things on fire, which turns the aura into angry yellows and reds and sort of wrecks whole serenity thing. Her stories have appeared in Underground Voices, storySouth, Pindeldyboz, other places.
Russian artist Fefa 23 years old and has been engaged in art all her life. Imagination and animals have always been important to her personally as well as creatively. Images surround her and overflow from within. For her, the technique or material she works with doesn't really matter—the main thing is to create.
Michelle Garren Flye lives on the coast of North Carolina. She walks on the beach whenever she can. She loves cats, kids and her husband. For more information, visit www.geocities.com/mgflye.
Janrae Frank is the author of the best-selling ebook series Dark Brothers of the Light co-author with Phil Smith of the Mother Damnation .
Jamie Dee Galey is not that tall but has a nice smile. You can reach him and check out his work at iamjamie.com.
Fran Giordano is an artist living in Schenectady, NY. She has made, shown, and sold work professionally for at least a dozen years. Her work has been sold to collectors all over the globe and shown in art galleries in the Northeast. She has worked over the years as a college photo instructor and art teacher. She's dealt with themes such as duality, theology, and happiness and its pursuit. She explores many different media, depending on the conceptual underpinning of the work. In the last few years she has considered the media of painting, photography, and digital imaging.
A.B. Goelman has published short stories in On Spec, L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future, and Dragon, Knights, and Angels. next short story will be appearing in the Spring issue of Fantasy Magazine. lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and the rain.
Beverly A. Jackson is a poet and fiction writer residing in North Carolina. Her work has appeared in print and online in many journals. She was Editor in Chief and of Ink Pot, of Lit Pot Press until 2005. Visit her blog at www.beverlyajackson.com.
Born September 11th, 1981, failed astronaut and race car driver Konrad Kruszewski is a mostly self-taught multi-instrumentalist, dabbling if not specializing in illustration, storytelling, photography, music, and all aspects of CG and traditional animation. He has earned a diploma in Advanced Studies in Character Animation at AnimationMentor, where he was directly guided by the finest animators at Pixar, ILM, and Disney, among others. Konrad is currently keeping busy with animation and graphic design in Northern California with no kids, no dogs, and no immediate aspirations to obtain either.
John Mantooth writes short stories that fall between the cracks in the genre sidewalk. His most recent publications appear in the Shadow Regions, Electric Velocipede, Shimmer.
Originally from NYC, Allen McGill, writes, acts and directs theatre in Mexico. His published fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, photos, etc., have won and appeared in The New York Times, The Writer, Newsday, Literary Potpourri, Poetry Midwest, QLRS, The Heron's Nest, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, World Haiku Review, many others. He is a former member of PEN. He was an invited guest at the First World Poetry Festival in Taiwan 2005 and haibun editor for Simply Haiku and two of his plays have been professionally produced in Sacramento and L.A. His book of poetry, SUNSEEKERS, a selection of haiku and haibun by Allen McGill, is to be published this Fall by Golden Swamp Warbler Press. His website can be reached via tinyurl.com/m7il.
Debbie Moorhouse is a British writer who also takes photographs. She reads slush for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is always writing a novel. Her website is at www.alternatespecies.com, where you can read stuff, look at photos, and generally hang out.
Kristine Ong Muslim has more than three hundred stories and poems published/ forthcoming in genre and mainstream publications, which include Adbusters, Aoife's Kiss, Dark Recesses, Dark Wisdom, Electric Velocipede, Grendelsong, Star*Line, Surreal Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine. publication credits are listed at www.freewebs.com/blackroom8.
Shweta Narayan writes research papers and fantasy, and attempts to keep the two distinct. She lives physically in southern California and virtually at shwetambari. deviantart.com, where she houses images that don't have a story yet. “The Doctrine of the Arbitrariness of the Sign” is her first non-academic publication.
Working alongside Kaolin Fire (then Stockinger), Robert Peake to teach programming languages to other undergraduates at UC Berkeley before earning his degree in English literature, emphasis poetry. These days he serves as the Chief Technology Officer for The David Allen Company, where he reads, writes, and thinks about many things in many languages. Robert is also currently studying poetry in the MFA in Writing program at Pacific University in Oregon. He lives in Ojai, California with his wife Valerie and cat Miranda.
A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Kenneth Ryan's short fiction and poetry can be found in a number of literary journals, both online and at newsstands. He recently his first novel, Hiders, and is hard at work on his second. He shares a home, a life, and a website with Nadine Darling, a national treasure. Details at www. kennay.com.
F. John Sharp lives and works in the Cleveland area. His work has appeared in Pindeldyboz, Paumanok Review, The Salt River Review, Lunarosity, Prose Ax, Quantum Muse, others. He has edited the journals Story Garden, Right Hand Pointing, Night Train. Visit his website at FJohnSharp.com.
Tomi Shaw lives in Kentucky amid the clutter of her work, three daughters, husband's toys, and a shedding orange mutt. She has a fuzzy home. Her work has appeared in fifty publications, including Identity Theory, The Barcelona Review, Pindeldyboz storySouth. .tomishaw.com
Sarah Singleton is the author of award-winning gothic fantasy Century (2005) and Heretic (2006), both published by Simon & Schuster. Her first novel, The Crow Maiden (Wildside Press), was shortlisted for the Crawford Award. Sarah's website is at www. crowmaiden.plus.com.
By day, Jason Stoddard just another frustrated engin
eer-turned-ad-guy who is busy twisting the minds of millions of consumers for his evil corporate masters. At, he writes science fiction that has been seen in Sci Fiction, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Talebones, Futurismic, others. Unfortunately, none of the agents or editors have yet believed his line that if he had a book deal, there would be less advertising in this world.
Rohith Sundararaman lives in Bombay, India. He gets his inspiration from the cow that never roamed the streets of Bombay. He has been published elsewhere and receives half a death threat every month for the same.
Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, lived in Israel and South Africa, travelled widely in Africa and Asia, and has lived in London for a number of years. He is the winner of the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize (awarded by the European Space Agency), s the editor of Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography (PS Publishing, 2004) and the anthology A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults (The British Fantasy Society, 2006), and is the author of the novella An Occupation of Angels (Pendragon Press, 2005). His stories appear in Sci Fiction, ChiZine, Postscripts, Nemonymous, Infinity Plus, Æon, Book of Dark Wisdom, Fortean Bureau, many others, and in translation in seven languages.
John Walters is an American writer, a Clarion graduate, currently living in Greece with his Greek wife and five sons. To pay the bills he teaches English as a second . He has had stories published in Talebones, Altair, Full Unit Hookup, other magazines.
Athena Workman is a married mother of two terrific girls living in Tennessee. Her stories have appeared in over twenty-two publications, including Corpse Blossoms, Apex Digest, Nocturnal Ooze, The Dark Krypt, Neverary, AlienSkin Magazine. ‘s also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Southeastern Science Fiction Achievement Award. Recently, she began dabbling in photography and plunged back into her childhood love of drawing. She runs the site Miss Millificent's World (www.missmillificent.com), a showcase of her various forms of artwork, and the online shop Kaleidoscope Farm.
GUD Magazine Issue 0 :: Spring 2007 Page 20