Howe, the oaf, laughed most at a list of reasons I gave as to why Mathematical Poetry Is Very Good Stuff, I have no idea why. Here are some of my reasons (improved, I ought to point out, since I threw them together a few days before the presentation): such poems' math quickly gets rid of any Philistines who might happen on them, so they don't have time to get so disgusted with the brain-bendingness of the poems to bother one later with irate letters to the NY Times; their math gives the poems freshness of expression, always a plus for Enlightened Readers; math, the ultimate tool of concision, makes the poems they're used in . . . concise--another cardinal virtue of poetry; math can give poetry an axiom-like feel of certainty to use against the uncertainty of existence it is generally about; likewise, math can render poetry more abstract-seeming than words ever could, thus giving it a texture with which to oppose, or highlight, the concreteness of the imagery it will generally also contain; and math can give poetry a tone of logic to use against or with the flow of intuition that will nearly always underlie it at its best; finally, mathematicality in poetry gives its auditor a chance at the thrill of Solution, and a reminder of how much fun solving arithmetic was for at least some of us back in elementary school, and still can be.

I've spent a long paragraph on this topic not only to pontificate about and push the value of my kind of poetry, but as an example of the sort of serious self-justification that's behind much of the otherstream poetry that I write about in this column, whether its practitioners verbalize it or not. My main hope, though, is that my readers will immediately write Bill Howe to bawl him out for daring to laugh at what I said. The oaf. Or did I already say that?

Mary Burger followed my presentation. She showed and discussed a number of visual poems by divers people like John Byrum and others I didn't know. Some of it was quite good stuff that made me feel better about the future of the form. Darren Wershler- Henry, next on the bill, performed an entertaining translation of bp Nichols's "Translating Translating Apollinaire" into Klingon-- and recited a nice textual poem (with puns), but presented no visual poems, which disappointed me. I never got a chance to talk with Darren, by the way, though he did introduce himself amiably to me before our panel. I mentioned the column I wrote here a while back that wasn't too positive about his work, but he hadn't seen it, so I didn't get a chance to smooth the waters, if they needed to be smoothed.

After Darren came Christian Bok with a fascinating song/grunt/groan/wail I, for one, had trouble believing came out of a human body. He followed that with a textual poem. Ellay Phillips and Wendy Kramer then, in a two-voiced polyphony, read/improvised-off-of the sides of several quite splendidly three-dimensionally-collaged cartons they'd fashioned, sometimes striking ore, sometimes not, but always blazoning the potential of such collaborative efforts.

Bill Howe finished our panel off with a charmingly, at least partially improvised poem/chat that, bless him, mentioned "Bob's punctuation marks" among the things he wanted to read, other than words; then--after spending some time inking a bowling ball he'd carved all kinds of letters and who-knows-what into--he rolled it over a long strip of paper a few dozen times, then read a poem out of the results. Great idea that didn't work 100% but was still A-1.

I have more to say about my Boston outing, but--once again--I've run out of room. Before I stop, though, I want to plug at least one publication. I've chosen the latest issue of House Organ, which is always full of first-rate textual poetry and literary criticism of all sorts. This issue consists of a "chain of responses, memories and connections" Bill Sylvester wrote about a manuscript called Freud and Picasso that his friend Gerald Burns had sent him a few months before Burns died. It especially jumped out at me because it reached me almost exactly the day I was thinking it was about time someone did something to commemorate Burns, who was one of our very best poets. Sylvester's commentary is not just about Burns, which would be enough, or just about poetry, but (like Burns's poetry) it splashes through all the workings of the mind, and--finally--of existence. In short, I highly recommend it.