Just saw your comment, what you're saying is interesting to know, thanks.
I thought it was clear that I was expressing my own opinion.
Let me tell you just this: I do not think that Rita Dove, Pulitzer notwithstanding, have ever, literally, proved any new theorem. What I think happens here, is a typical journalist, or professional writer, trying to write about science, or just to use science language, whichever the intention was.
Also, windows and transparent walls as artistic device in a 21st century poem? C'mon...
> I thought it was clear that I was expressing my own opinion
I didn't get that sorry. When you said "I don't think [it] would be considered a good poem", it sounded like you were using a passive modal verb to suggest universality.
If it was intended as personal, I withdraw the rest of my comment.
> Also, windows and transparent walls as artistic device in a 21st century poem?
Since you've offered me the opportunity of being gloriously pedantic :) I can't resist saying that it was written in 1980. (Of course, that makes no difference to your opinion, I understand.)
When were transparent walls a suitable artistic device?
No problem :)
re transparent walls I'd say they might have been suitable in late 17th century or so...
But seriously. To begin, the whole construct of comparing theoretical discovery to "seeing new things" is very old.
Take Newton's famous "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." That actually is late 17th, although wikipedia says it could be even from the 12th, [1]. The windows probably have been used metaphorically even before that, but to be on the safe side, google ngrams finds them before 1900, [2]. Don't see much numbers about actual transparent walls, but a "glass ceiling" was used metaphorically as early as 1848, [3]. Thats remarkable on its own, although thats a different metaphor. Literal uses are even earlier.
Anyway, the point is cliche alert went off right at that first stanza.
There's a deeper problem, though. And that is that "proving" a theorem is not the thing that enables one to see. Proving is typically a rather mundane process, once one knows what one wants to prove. Take Pythagorean theorem even. Once one can formulate it, its not really hard to prove. But coming up with the notion that that is a thing that could be right, thats more difficult, thats the moment of "seeing". Its a bit of a simplification, but its mostly the discovery of new formulations that drives mathematics, not proofs. And so, the opening "I proved a theorem and then whooaaa..." is quite ridiculous.
