poetic segue

I'm sitting here with my partly working laptop
(in my lap- go figure (ergonomical nightmare?)) typing
a bit for you(who?). It's a bit past 6 pm localtime.

This might be considered an extension of my last post.
As such I'll try to continue my thoughts. There's
a bit of a problem... I can't see my last post!
Well, I'll just have to use my faulty memory to figure
this all out :)

a butterfly
in front and back
of a woman's path

--- chiyo ni

I hope I got that name right- I typed it from memory,
though it's not much to remember is it?

It's a translation (not done by me!!) of a haiku by
a famouse female poet from many years ago- if I recall,
she came one generation after basho??? Basho is a very
famous poet. To many things to say about these things
and too little that I can say due mostly to my ignorance.

Let's not worry about that. Let's just look at the poem
itself.

A question:

Why is it a poem?

I'm willing to bet that the answer is a little difficult to
find since it is a translation from Japanese to English.

Of course the answer is allways difficult when it's about the
human condition- all creative things are about the human condition.

Go figure.

Here is one way to look at it:

The poem follows a kind of structure; one that
is easy to see, and also very subtle.

The easy to see structure is often difficult to
see in translation. A haiku has three lines.
The first line is five (5) syllables long.
The second line is seven (7) syllables long.
The third line is as the first. This is not a
rule set in stone- it can be bent :)

This also describes a poetic form called senryu (i
hope i spelled that right).

Also of note is that these are Japanese poetic forms.
Japanese is a strongly syllabic language (is this a
real term?), meaning that each sound part is strictly
deliniated (I'm exagerating for the sake of simplicity).
In English, one can often struggle to decide how to
seperate one syllable from another. The written
japanese form takes one character and uses that as
the syllable. So it's very easy to count the syllables
and to use syllables as structure.

Haiku vs. Senryu.



Haiku has that subtle structure in addition to the
physical stuff we saw above. The poem deals with
some subject of nature.

Now, I'm not sure, but I think that the following deals
with both poetic forms:

The first two lines set up an image, and the last line
gives you a completion- a surprise maybe, or a thought
to take with you. It might be like a twist in a
story.



I really wish I had some reference material with me
so that I was sure about what I've been talking about.

Ok, now,







a butterfly in front and back of a woman's path

Don't worry about syllable counts and that stuff, just worry about the stuff inside.



Now, the first two lines describe a butterfly,
or maybe two of them.. well, that's part of
nature isn't it?

The third line is different- a woman's path?

That's the twist. The part that brings the first two
lines to completion.

Why?

Because, the butterfly is a culturally significant
symbol of woman in Japan- or at least the Japan of
chiyo ni.

What does it all mean? I'm not sure it's supposed to
mean anything, but bringing the images of a butterfly
and a woman together bring a kind if imaginary gestalt
even for me- and I'm outside of Japanese
culture; past and present.

So, a poem is likely to be culturally charged. I'd
posit that it's more so than other forms of
communication. Though other creative outlets may
be so charged.

Now, here is how I look at the question:

A poem is a poem when it compresses meaning
and idea into something small.

Does that sound silly? It's not silly to me.

A story that's just a story tells a tale.

A poem can tell that tale, but instead of
describing things, it uses words with
meaning suffused through them.

a butterfly
in front and back
of a woman's path

five important words :butterfly
front back woman path.

front and back are really together... that makes
four words.

Four words that say what a woman is and what
life is and the nature of these things. (i think)
It took me longer to summerize the poem than it
took the poem to explain itself!!!

What does that say? It says that poetry
communicates one hell of a lot of meaning
in a small space. Granted, a lot of this
is dependent on culture, but it still works.

What am I getting at? Well, I'm talking about
writing programs.

for (0..$#pages){

save($pages[$_]) if $pages[$_]=~/^\s*?\d{1,3}/;

}

What the heck does that mean?

It means that we are looking at the pages of a book.
We are saving all the pages that have page numbers at
the top of the book.

The truth is, I'm not sure that that's working code.. but it's
good for my thoughts on the subject.

The information is compressed into a small
space and presented in a tight little bundle.

Is this poetry? Well, I suppose it's not exactly, but it
does carry some of the weight: it's expressive material
which lets its information out to the reader who has
the cultural background to understand it.

But what about going beyond the superficial? What
about creativity and meaning? Well the latter is harder
to argue, but the former is definitely there!

Solving any problem takes creativity- as children we
are all creative in our shinanigans and eaqually creative
in our excuses when we get caught.

the above poem- I mean snippet of code was pounded out
at the spur of the moment, much like haiku and senryu have
been in the past: creative processes. Moving stanzas around isn't just to
make a program work right, but to make it read right.

A program should be easy on the eyes, it's structures pleasant
and flowing. The words and phrases should lead you through
the desires of the programmer.

Does this sound like poetry?

Well, this creative endevour is what makes me enjoy writing
programs. It's solving problems and getting past challenges, but
it's also making something that I can call beautiful.

That's my argument today. Programming is (like?) poetry.


I should make a little confession. While I've taken this
metaphore to heart, it's not mine originally. It's something
that others have brought up before me.
The Perlmonks website has had at least one thread on the subject, and
I found a neat interview of some Sun developer about starting a
Bachelor of Computer Arts degree. I don't think this is idle speculation..

I guess that this post is a roundabout way of explaining my love of
programming. Go figure.

---

Sitting here in a green chair. Wood trim.
My left hand is bothering me because I'm typing on this
laptop with poor posture. My wife is in class still.
It's about 1/4 to 8 in the evening (localtime).

I'm tired now. I need some rest. I need to work hard
tomorrow doing things that I do not really enjoy.

But this I enjoy. Expression feels good.

I'm not quite so brave to pour my emotions into this as
my wife has done, but I think I'll come around to doing
that as well.

I was going to study POE (Perl Object Environment). Which
is a very creative method of making neat things happen :)

Of course, I don't need POE to get stuff done and
to enjoy playing, but it makes things so very interesting.
Instead, I'm writing to an anonymous audience from my own
semi-anonymous space.

Is this addictive or theraputic? Or both? One can get
addicted to therapy, or so I hear.

Strange. I just read the last two lines in the imaginary
voices of woody allen and mia farrow- funny?

Silly.

I want to use this thing for talking to myself.. post ideas
for me to see later, but Instead I'm talking you.
Well, I guess I'll have to deal with it.