Feb. 2, 2022, 9:26 a.m.

après le bluets

wonder systems

1.  Perhaps from poetry I came to engineering (or vice versa) because both seemed to me exercises in metaphor. I recall when this thought occurred in college, walking between class at a time I wrote no poetry. It was as useless then as now, though then I had no illusion of its use.

2.  This isn't to deny their differences: what attracted me to the puzzles of “problem sets” were the seemingly complete enclosure of their worlds, the verification of their answers. When making things was presented in this way, I became an engineer.

3.  Not all disciplining of knowledge is metaphor. I admire history and chemistry from some distance, for I do not trust myself to find a singular truth, only to convince others while I convince myself.

4.  For the puzzles of engineering and poetry conceal argument in form and confuse concision for clarity.

5.  But you are wrong to call them puzzles. Or at least I have never liked solving a poem and began to despair of solving engineering, though since I have found no enclosures as compelling.


after bluets by Maggie Nelson

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