To appreciate it, one must first recognize it for what it is: a long-division problem. I use the word "problem" intentionally, for I like a poem that presents a challenge, that can give an aesthcipient (i.e., reader/viewer) the thrill of solving it. The work should also be identifiable recognizable as a poem. Its shape, and the heart and words, which are clearly not numerical, should assure that. An aesthcipient, ideally, will therefore approach it both mathematically and verbally. He will be ready to work out the "arithmetic" involved while staying alert and slow for any images, nice sounds or other elements of poetry that might emerge.

To "solve" the poem, one need only go through the standard steps involved in long-division, remembering that the poem's words and phrases are to be taken as quantities. Ergo, one must divide "existence" by "poetry." Or find out how many times poetry will go into existence-italicized, or existence at its highest level. To do that involves something that's become standard in my mathematical poetry, the idea of multiplying some image or concept by another. In this case, one must multiply poetry by the human heart, or emotion, or energy-source, or love--however one wants to interpret the drawing of the heart. Note, incidentally, that the heart is clearly hand-drawn, not a perfectly symmetrical "professional" heart. This is expressively minor but still important (albeit not brilliantly original as it's something Madison Avenue does all the time).

By multiplying poetry by the heart to try to solve the mathemaku, one will get a product some small amount less than "existence-italicized." It's the same as multiplying 2 by 3 when dividing 2 into 7, or 6, the product of 2 times 3, which is as close to 7 as one can get without being larger than 7. The poem thus metaphorically implies that "existence" (almost) equals "somewhere, minutely, a widening." At the same time, the poem is saying that the heart times poetry yields this widening. In other words, the poem only yields a small widening (in perception or whatever) . . . but that widening is nearly equal to existence-at-its-highest! Or so the fore-burden (overt message) of my poem claims.

There's more. Since poetry won't go into existence-italicized evenly, there is a remainder: "existence." This allows another implied metaphor: existence-not-italicized plus a widening equals existence-italicized. With existence-not-italicized, a mere remainder, being considered much smaller in value than the widening that poetry can bring. Existence without poetry ain't nuttin'.

Okay, a critic might say, the poem expresses a pleasant sentiment but isn't it just a trivial gadget otherwise? Perhaps so. I regard it as a good poem not for its message, though, but because of its relative freshness of expression, because of its succinctness (something that using arithmetic greatly increases), because of the tension in it between open-ended verbal generalities and closure-seeking mathematical strictness, and--most important--because I feel the arithmetic of the poem happening, the machinery of the long-division specimen chunking smoothly and inexorably along, and--almost ridiculously--making poetry. To put it another way, I feel myself to be simultaneously experiencing the poem in two distinct places in my brain, the mathematical and the verbal. To get a person into two (or more) places in his brain at once is, to me, the highest function of poetry.

(Note: I would love to hear from anyone who wants to comment in the box below on my poem, or on my commentary, or both, negatively as well as positively; if what you have to say is at all coherent, I will publish it here.--BG)

A postscript: I originally had this poem on display at the Comprepoetica home page, but accidentally deleted everything on the page toward the end of 2000 when trying to add something to it. That same day, I learned that ninety percent of the people who visited Comprepoetica used "love" as the keyword to get to it--my heart was my site's main draw! That bothered me enough to make me transfer my poem from my home page to here.