Sunday, August 14, 2011
What do you think of this poem?
I sympathise philosophically with this poem, but I like it less than the original. It is simpler: now the speaker crly anthropomorphises the perfect shape, giving it perception (ll. 3-4), scope (l. 5, possibly echoing Eliot's echo of Shakespeare's sonnet 29), and most ridiculously of all, ascribing knowledge (l. 6) to it as some kind of integral. The shape rightly rejects these appurtenances. The insulting na�vet� of the first stanza makes it unpalatable to me; the second stanza fares a little bit better. `Length-less points and breadth-less lines' is a quite acceptable expression; but it does not do justice to, `that only see their empty world,' which is a very good one, reminding me in turn of Eliot's magnificent line for its context in Burnt Norton, `into our first world.' I freely admit I do not understand the last two lines, though I do understand you to mean what in topology is called a 2-sphere by a two-dimensional sphere. Is the sense of integration from an n-form to an n+1 form supposed to convey a sense of aspiration or wonder on the part of the n-form which the ideal form in turn, humanly, idealises as knowledge? If so, I much sympathise with the poem's aesthetic appeal to you, for I have attempted to do the same in my `robot' poems; but I am afraid the tone is just slightly off. Perhaps I misunderstand in part; nevertheless it is a worthy project.
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