Aesthetics

                                               
                                                      
  On page 169 of The Mathematical Experience
by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, the authors
write:                                               
                                                    
     Aesthetic judgments tend to be personal,
     they tend to vary with cultures and with
     the generations, and philosophical dis-         
     cussions of aesthetics have in recent      
     years tended less toward the dogmatic          
     prescription of what is beautiful than       
     toward discussion of how aesthetic judg-    
     ments operate and function.                  
                                                   
   This book, which I am jaggedly reading, was         
published by Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 
and copyrighted in 1981 by Birkhäuser Boston.
                                                   
   Back in the early 1960's, when he and I were
Jesuit novices at a facility near St. Bonifacius,
Minnesota, the late Lawrence Deysach told me:
"Math is the greatest art."  It may well be this is
true; and if it is, it is because beauty can be more
easily seen and affirmed in mathematics than in
any other art, though music is a close second, or
architecture is.                                    
                                                      
   Poetry?  From my perspective, each poem's about
its own aesthetic or interactions of aesthetics.
A poem succeeds when it adheres to/radiates what
is at the heart of it.  So, the strength of its core
does matter; but one could argue till time's demise
about what constitutes aesthetic strength.        
                                                    
   Every poetic school is like every school of unlike
fish, and what attracts one maker of poems may not
attract some other maker of poems.  No manner of
using words is patently better than any other, but
certain manners may be more appropriate for their
culture.  The culture we in The United States are
passing through, and have in one form or another
been passing through since this nation's founding?
Slippery and slimy.  But this is the land of the   
free, the home of the brave, the melting pot of   
the world.  Exactly.  Let the myriads of attention
be: indeterminate, determinate; sign, signified;
I erased, I raised.  And to those who think it is
really possible to obliterate ego and authorship,
change your names to some number anonymous.
When I was old enough to understand, I accepted I
am Brian Salchert.  That is my label.  My passage
on this planet requires it.  I, however, do not
require it for myself, however it may seem I do.
I question it.  Most of what I've written is old
school stuff, one might conclude.  Perhaps I'm a
carp among rainbow trout; but old school or not,
most of what I've written reveals a man at odds
with himself.  That is my indeterminacy.               
                                                     
   As to beauty, it seems to have lost whatever
relevance.  In an empire in decline, a planet
inhabited by a sentient species in decline--oh,
specific amazing discoveries might yet arise
and reverse what is, a hard-edged purposefully
ugly poetry could be a saving tonic for (rather 
than another symptom of) what ails.  I make no
judgment here.  Nescio (I do not know) defines
me well.  Beauty--also truth--are concepts each
human perceives differently at different times.
                                                    
   On April 24, 2008 I posted the first entry
of a math project I placed the final touch on
today/ over at my S H blog.  13 entries.  It
needed to be, and I am satisfied it is, and 
how it is.  Still, I did not abandon my other
interests, and have searched my way to poetry
posts helpful to me.  One addresses procedural
poetry, and another concerns the University of
Arizona's Conceptual Poetry Symposium.  Nathan
Austin's A defense of (procedural) poetry is
on his This Cruellest Month blog.  The second
is an enewsletter from the Poetry Center at
the University of Arizona.  Both of these--
and of course there are numerous others--
engage poetry aesthetics not to my taste,
but of which I feel I should acquire more
knowledge.                                    
                                                 
                                             
Adrift in/ a drift adrift.                 
                                                 
Rho00074