The idea of "turning toward the light" at the beginning and end of this one reminds me of Thomas Lux's "Ode to the Joyful Ones" (https://www.bethanyareid.com/thomas-luxs-to-the-left-of-time/) where he writes about admiring people who see the world a certain way, "Because you don’t have to tell them to walk toward the light."
How the ordinary reminds us of the infinite... "I don’t think of this poem as some simplistic critique of math at all. I say this as someone who is absolutely smitten by math. Someone who sits in my high school’s calculus class during my free period. Someone who once, in my early days of attempting to publish, sent a wildly long and almost certainly disjointed request to Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, asking to write a book about asymptotes. I don’t think I’ve ever been rejected more quickly. That no came swift and almost violently. But I tried. Maybe I’ll try again." Well, you might approach it...
Beautiful, Devin. Thank you for writing it.
Thank you for your writing and for reminding us that writing for writing’s sake is sheer beauty.
Beautiful piece Devin. I love how you infuse Nurkse’s poem with layers of meaning and your reminder of the vitalness, vitality of poetic expression.
The idea of "turning toward the light" at the beginning and end of this one reminds me of Thomas Lux's "Ode to the Joyful Ones" (https://www.bethanyareid.com/thomas-luxs-to-the-left-of-time/) where he writes about admiring people who see the world a certain way, "Because you don’t have to tell them to walk toward the light."
How the ordinary reminds us of the infinite... "I don’t think of this poem as some simplistic critique of math at all. I say this as someone who is absolutely smitten by math. Someone who sits in my high school’s calculus class during my free period. Someone who once, in my early days of attempting to publish, sent a wildly long and almost certainly disjointed request to Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, asking to write a book about asymptotes. I don’t think I’ve ever been rejected more quickly. That no came swift and almost violently. But I tried. Maybe I’ll try again." Well, you might approach it...