
Why poetry is good for the rational mind - kawera
https://newhumanist.org.uk/5052/why-poetry-is-good-for-the-rational-mind
======
calebm
As a software engineer who occasionally writes poetry, I strongly agree with
this. Going back and forth (between the "logical" and "creative" sides) feels
healthy - kind of like switching between standing and sitting at a desk - once
you've done one for a while, the other feels good.

Here's one of my poems:

    
    
        What's my great fear?
        I'll tell you; come near.
        To lay down in death
        with so much left.
    
        Passion not spent -
        Oh cowardly regret!
        For fear of others?
        The thousand deaths.
    
        I'm afraid to die
        With no twinkle in my eye
        To pass meagerly by
        Yet hidden inside.
    
        To walk through life
        Not truly alive
        And to pass in the night
        With an unfelt "goodbye".
    

Here's some more of my poetry:
[http://calebmadrigal.com/topics/poetry/](http://calebmadrigal.com/topics/poetry/)

~~~
avindroth
Reminds me of Thoreau.

 _Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song
still in them._

------
Yhippa
> Allowing ambiguity to exist means accepting, for example, that I'm not
> always right, that there are limits to what I can know, that more than one
> thing may be going on simultaneously, and that there can be kinds of meaning
> that are local or individual rather than universalisable.

Two weekends ago I did a wine and painting class. They basically blow up a
picture of your pet, greyscale it, and put it on a canvas. Using some guidance
and some help from the instructor you paint your pet (while enjoying delicious
wine of your choosing).

I've been heads-down in a full-stack project for months and haven't had a
creative outlet and it was very difficult for me to get started with this. I
approached it like I did with my programs looking for exact inputs and
parameters as to how to go about painting. It was very frustrating because I
was falling behind the rest of the class and it looked terrible.

At some point I figured out I just needed to "let go" and start painting and
trying out different things. I experimented and ended up with something that
wasn't perfect but I was very happy with. It's on my wall in my office in
fact.

I realize that I need these types of exercises to make my mind more plastic.
Being so rigid for so long I feel really stresses me out and that releases
like this are needed to let the pressure blow out. It takes things like this
to get remind me that life really is ambiguous and not nearly perfect like my
programs and dev ops processes.

~~~
peruvian
The whole idea of "right vs left brained" has been extremely harmful. There's
probably a lot of "technical" people who never think about doing what you did
because they say "that's not my kind of activity".

~~~
avindroth
I dislike "right vs. left brained" as a term to define people. We are all
right and left-brained (duh). We can also train our brain; we may be
predisposed one way, but we are not predestined to be "right-brained" or
"left-brained".

I like the distinction when used to denote different modes of one brain.
Barbara Oakley talks about them as "focused" vs. "diffused" modes[1]. There
are moments of high-presure analysis and low-pressure creativity.

The distinction helps to leverage these modes in solving problems.

[1]:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O96fE1E-rf8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O96fE1E-rf8)

------
noam87
Before I discovered that math and programming were actually a whole lot of
creative fun, I got my kick writing poetry. Conversely, if you've never tried,
you might discover you'll get the same rational / problem-solving kick writing
poetry as you do writing programs.

Writing metered poetry that does not sound "stiff" is particularly
challenging. I like how this one came out:

\---

    
    
        I would not mind floating downstream; 
        End up among the fish and whales.
    
        Of the ocean waters, dark and deep, 
        I’m not afraid, for I do know 
        That, once you’ve lived among the corals, 
        The muddy currents, pebbles and rocks, 
        And parlous contours of the stream 
        Against whose tide you’d rather swim 
        Are banes you’ll gladly leave behind;
    
        For deep at sea you’re not confined 
        By rocks and edges that grind and rasp– 
        The river’s water may be sweet, 
        But just as sweet, the river’s shallow; 
        I’d rather down its torrent follow, 
        Follow to the salted sea.”
    
        (At this you quickly sipped your tea)
    
        “Yes, in the sea I’ll freely trace 
        The peaceful ebbs of open space, 
        More free than any shallow stream; 
        As free as logic in a dream.”
    
        Again you sipped, and leaned, and laughed, 
        Then played a moment with your scarf; 
        And I suspect you did agree.
    

\---

I have a few more writings of different types at
[https://noamswebsite.wordpress.com/category/poems-and-
fictio...](https://noamswebsite.wordpress.com/category/poems-and-fiction/) :)

I miss writing! I think after this startup thing, if it's successful, I'll
take some time to write again. I'm probably very rusty!

And it's incredibly challenging. Writing something meaningful and lyrical can
be as much of a brain workout as designing a complex recursive algorithm. I've
no qualms about placing Shakespeare under the same category of genius as
Newton or Gauss.

It's kind of a shame that today the two worlds seem so separate... both sides
are poorer for it.

~~~
OisinMoran

        “Yes, in the sea I’ll freely trace 
        The peaceful ebbs of open space, 
        More free than any shallow stream; 
        As free as logic in a dream.”
    

Really love this stanza!

~~~
noam87
Thanks! :)

------
evincarofautumn
> The poem from which those familiar phrases come, William Blake’s “The
> Tyger”, has a lovely cockney rhyme at the end of its first verse:

A lot has been written about the rhyme of “What immortal hand or eye / could
frame thy fearful symmetry?”.

Long story short, these words were probably pronounced with the same final
diphthong [əi] in Blake’s time, or they _had been_ pronounced that way
recently enough (the past century or so) that it was still accepted as a
rhyme. Poetry often relies on somewhat old-fashioned language to fit the meter
and sense of a piece.

------
SuperPaintMan
[Disclaimer: Just woke up, non coherent ] [Disclaimer: Artist behind:
[https://theblackbox.ca/hn.html](https://theblackbox.ca/hn.html) ]

>“Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” the American poet Emily Dickinson
instructed herself

Do you look at the universe in Engineering / CompSci terms and frameworks?
That's not a normal method of interpreting reality, but due to our context we
extend it via our jargon and experience. Can you consider future life choices
framed by a meat-algo tempered by back-propagation? What does that mean (to
you?).

Half of the issue with the sciences/engineering is that a sense of absolute
correctness and process is drilled into the student over a few years. The code
you write may be pretty, understandable and modular but look at this
benchmark. Scrap it, you're wrong according to this measure (excluding any
others such as future maintenance, interop requirements, etc). There is
freedom to solve a problem in a unique way, but the path there is fairly
railroaded, although this is where programming gets creative. Save for end
results, creative/flexible/nonlogical/associative thought has little place
here.

I worked on a project a few weeks ago called BlackBox that explores this
Engineering/Art space (an arbitrary divide or synthesis, lines are handy
alright?). I'm a fine arts painter and while the meat has been loosening up
slowly, the conceptual "baggage" of my Engineering context follows me.
Analysis, Analysis, Preplan, Observe, Direct relation, Justification,
Analysis, Blank Canvas, Paralysis. When I'm with fellow Artists what amazes
them is my ability to systematically break a problem into smaller manageable
bits, yet still keeping them non-modular. This baggage cannot simply be shed,
it's part of the identity and story of SuperPaintMan/BlackBox so I use it as
an arbitrary line in the sand. Fine Art / Engineering (What that means is a
exploratory process).

Associative thinking is a strange creature, trusting the non-justifiable
conclusions and straws we grasp allows our works to breathe in new and
innovative ways. My line for having gone to far is opening a bakery whose
principal ingredient is engine oil. [
[https://xkcd.com/452/](https://xkcd.com/452/) ]

------
g8oz
Ostentatious appreciation of poetry is also great for social signaling.

------
eevilspock
What many tech/math/science oriented people fail to acknowledge is that
rational, while much of the time is a good thing, can also mean rigid, cold,
arrogant, absolutist, and reductionist. These are the reasons many people
criticize and sometimes despise Silicon Valley and the tech industry.

------
daemonk
Fuzziness and ambiguity is good for the rational mind. We can't evolve our
thinking without mutations.

------
xlayn
Anything that pushes you out of your comfort area is good for you, brain can
be conceptualized as a muscle... and if you don't use it you loose it.

I met a guy who had a stroke and as a result of it he loosed a lot of his
brain capacity.

He was learning spanish, learning about computers, learning french, writing a
book, doing kayak, running, hiking... everyday.

He told me... every second of kayak I do; I'm kayaking running away from
death.

He was conscious on how this helped his brain, to gain plasticity and allow
other parts of his brain to supply for the loosed capabilities.

------
ams6110
I'm someone who doesn't "get" poetry at all. I don't like reading it, writing
it, or listening to it (unless it's set to music i.e. lyrics).

~~~
mpbm
Yeah, I appreciate when a point is succinctly and aesthetically encoded, but
not poetry for the sake of poetry. Seems like the vast majority of it is just
ambiguity masquerading as depth.

One of my favorite poems is Invictus by William Earnest Henley, so I tried
reading a lot more of his poems, but they all seemed like a chore.

------
onetwotree
I'm much happier for being in possession of the technologies of human
experience that the humanities gave me.

I think for people with good rational abilities it's tempting to think that we
can logic our way through all of our internal (meaning, emotion,
relationships) problems the way we can with external (business, financial,
engineering) problems. It doesn't work, and the tools provided by both the
humanities and spiritual traditions[1] do work, marvelously.

[1] When approached pragmatically, rather than dogmatically. Dogmatically
religious people seem to suffer from as much or more angst than anyone.

------
p4wnc6
I am a burnt out and long-term unemployed engineer who has had no luck on the
job market.

I've taken to writing a lot of poetry lately as a way to process my feelings
and it has been very helpful.

I actually recently read the book _How Music Works_ by David Byrne and I
enjoyed reading his account of one of his creative processes. He said that he
often begins by coming up with a vocalization, grunts or hums or breaths, that
fits into a certain rhythmic pattern, even though it has no linguistic meaning
at that point.

He'll work to sharpen it, refine it, all without even trying to add words.
Then, after getting that basic guttural rhythm down, he will begin to search
for words that fit into it.

This kind of syllabic constraint also reminded me of Oulipo, of which I've
been a long-time admirer.

Anyway, I started doing the same thing, and what I've been amazed with is the
way the syllabic constraints cause you to sculpt and shape words and sentences
that you sort of didn't even consciously realize were inside yourself.

Just a quick example, I came up with the idea to have stanzas with a syllable
structure (for each line) of 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 3, 8. I was actually sitting in my
computer chair moving my shoulders to the 3-3-4-4 part and even drew a sort of
bastardized Morse code thing on a post-it note to make sure I didn't forget
it. I also felt like I wanted a longer line at the end of the stanza, because
I couldn't see how continuing the 3-3-4-4 pattern could reach anything that
verbally felt "conclusive" \-- if that makes any sense (it probably doesn't).

At any rate, here [0] is the poem I came up with out of that experiment
(warning: I'm not a poet, and this is totally amateur, but it was still
enjoyable to write):

\-----

In my hand

made of sand

electric pulse,

wavefront growing.

Integrate

mass and weight

and the broken fragments of slate.

Now tell me why do I ache for

that which I don't know?

Now tell me why do I ache for

that which I don't know?

In my mind

fruit and rind

fall away from

trees on fire.

Multiply

time by land

by the darkened lines of my hand.

Now tell me why do I ache for

one who I don't know?

Now tell me why do I ache for

one who I don't know?

But do I really ache for

one who I don't know?

But do I really ache for

one who I don't know?

What do I really ache for

can my kind ever know?

Is it the chance to know her

or the chance to know me?

\----- [0] <
[http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2016/07/ache4.html](http://suitdummy.blogspot.com/2016/07/ache4.html)
>

Many of the phrases from the poem were not ideas that I rationally or
consciously accessed. The two stanzas are about the way that I feel this sort
of electric reverberation of loss over some relationship experiences, and that
it sometimes feels like a devastated landscape inside of myself. But I think
if I had sat down to write that directly, instead of letting it just kind of
fall into the framework of the syllable constraints, I would have sounded more
like the emo kids from South Park (err, maybe I do anyway).

~~~
exolymph
I like how you used repetition.

~~~
p4wnc6
I love, love, love repetition.

~~~
softawre
Yeah, good stuff!

------
arethuza
The first lines of poetry that really stuck with came, from all places, a book
on computability and complexity:

 _Tempt me no more for

I Have known the lightning's hour,

The poet's inward pride,

The certainty of power._

------
PavlovsCat
I know I shouldn't quote it all, it's too long, I should just mention the
title. But I so want to quote at least _some_ of it, and it's all in one
piece. So against my better judgement, but in a spirit of sadness and concern
about "the world" as it seems to be going for "since like forever" and a sense
of melancholia about not being a child anymore, rather than, say, snark about
SV etc. -- one of my all time favourites:

    
    
        Blight
        
        by Ralph Waldo Emerson
        
        Give me truths;
        For I am weary of the surfaces,
        And die of inanition. If I knew
        Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
        Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,
        Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
        Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sun-dew,
        And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
        Draw untold juices from the common earth,
        Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
        Their fragrance, and their chemistry apply
        By sweet affinities to human flesh,
        Driving the foe and stablishing the friend,--
        O, that were much, and I could be a part
        Of the round day, related to the sun
        And planted world, and full executor
        Of their imperfect functions.
        But these young scholars, who invade our hills,
        Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
        And traveling often in the cut he makes,
        Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,
        And all their botany is Latin names.
        The old men studied magic in the flowers,
        And human fortunes in astronomy,
        And an omnipotence in chemistry,
        Preferring things to names, for these were men,
        Were unitarians of the united world,
        And, wheresoever their clear eye-beams fell,
        They caught the footsteps of the SAME. Our eyes
        And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
        And strangers to the plant and to the mine.
        The injured elements say, 'Not in us;'
        And haughtily return us stare for stare.
        For we invade them impiously for gain;
        We devastate them unreligiously,
        And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
        Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
        Only what to our griping toil is due;
        But the sweet affluence of love and song,
        The rich results of the divine consents
        Of man and earth, of world beloved and lover,
        The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
        And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
        And pirates of the universe, shut out
        Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
        Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
        The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
        Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
        And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;
        And life, shorn of its venerable length,
        Even at its greatest space is a defeat,
        And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
        And, in its highest noon and wantonness,
        Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;
        Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
        And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
        Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,
        Chilled with a miserly comparison
        Of the toy's purchase with the length of life.

------
tnuoccapass
Rational is used wrong about 99% of times. People will say something is
irrational because for instance they will have some math equation that they
will say about that they will say things are irrational. The problem is that
their equation is wrong and even worse the equation is usually the least wrong
thing they are wrong about about everything.

~~~
cvick
Yeah, I find that people use "Logical" wrong as well, or, more specifically,
"Not Logical" or "Illogical". When asked to explain _why_ something is or
isn't logical...blank stares.

