Monday, December 15, 2008

Six Nine-Derangements

How do I want to
know it and why?

Do I want it to
and why know how?

Know-how, do I want
it to and why?

why do it,
and knowing I want to, how?

to want how, do I know it
and why?

and
Why do I
know how to want it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This reminds me of a Nikki Giovanni poem called Choices.

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/poetry/giovanni_nikki.html#choices

Eat a Book said...

Ah, thanks, I really enjoyed that! I'm glad to see a similar idea, and hers is to a much more meaningful and striking effect with the final four lines.

As a side note, part of the inspiration of this comes from the idea of derangements in mathematics, which are simply arrangements of objects (numbers, usually) in which none of the objects is in a previously specified place. The coincidental use of "deranged" to describe madness or inexplicable human behavior could be a nice way to express the idea in poetry, I think, though I haven't quite gotten it to work the way I want to yet.