converters and the complex conversions they perform
converters and the complex conversions they perform
by Greer Bevel
watts, ohms, volts, amps
all bolts to me
and always by surprise
conversions require more mathematics
or interest than i possess
within my knowledge or skillset
converters are commonplace
the real issue is trust
when enlivening circuits with too little or too much life
will this small bit of ceramic and plastic stand up
to the rigors of
the silver-white sudden?
Greer Bevel…seems like i’ve read some of this author’s material before on the site. Poem title was pretty profound (which i’m a big fan of). 4 stanzas of 3 lines packages spunky piece into suave format. My impression is that there is implied personification with circuits/electricity [converters]…just enough to kind of shock you (no pun intended) into making a connection between machine actions and the behavior of mankind. But who am i to say..whoops! My breaker just tripped! zap..
Quasimofo commented on a recent poem: Remember the Old Testament days when a poet didn’t have to be a computer scientist?
I don’t know if I remember those days, when poets contemplated love and life, searching for some far-flung truth. Sometimes, it seems those truths or the search for said truths is lost in cold circuitry, postponed by chimes from our electronic tethering. We work too hard, too much, to contemplate the universe. Supposedly, domestication of cattle and the ability to plant crops afforded humans the time to write poetry and sing. Computers took that time away, as opposed to giving us more.
I think about this poem from time to time and it was a part of inspiring me to start posting again. I sit on my couch, alternating my forlorn looks between the poem I just scratched on the back of a credit card receipt and the machine I must enter it into before anyone can see it. When I enter it into that machine, some intrinsic piece of it will die. Lost in translation. When my poetry is really awful, I will blame part of it on digitization: it sucked because you couldn’t hold it; you couldn’t hear me or hear me in it. I blame it on your browser.
In the poem, the speaker is “enlivening,” creating, but really? What? Where is it going? Who cares; we all need electricity more than poetry, or possibly more than we need one another.
And the emphasis the world has come to place on science and mathematics and therefore taken away from other creative endeavors. Sure, Einstein was an artist with numbers. That’s why we call him Einstein.
“More mathematics / or interest than i possess / within my knowledge or skillset” We are all just tools to be implemented. We have a “knowledge base” and “skill sets.” It says so on the back of my packaging.
Such apathy mingled with electricity. Look at that boring lightening bolt!
And what is the silver white sudden? Sounds like cum to me. Hinting at primal life, once again.
Anyway, can’t tell you all the reasons, but I dig it! I may have misunderstood it, or some of it, but it made me think and comes back to me from time to time. Keep it up.