Writing poems and writing Python in Jupyter notebooks encourage thinking about similarities and differences between poetry and code, and more importantly, how one informs the other. Python makes me very aware of form, specifically how lines are best broken up. On the other hand, poetry makes me very aware of words as symbols, references and pointers.
While my long-term goal is to finish an exhaustive essay on the distinctions and connections between these two tendencies, here are some preliminary thoughts:
- Concision. Both poetry and code seek concision — the latter for optimization, and the former for impact. For both, it is a matter of building the shortest path to something intentional and sensible. In both, concision works best when balanced with a good sense of flow coming from a clarity of phrasing and/or readability.
- Tendencies. Code leans towards precision and predictability, while poetry leans towards ambiguity and surprise. While code needs to be as transparent or explicit as possible, poetry relies on the implicit, the unsaid. While a line of code usually serves a singular purpose — which can be reused elsewhere, I know, but that’s beside the point — a poetic line usually elicits multiple interpretations and meanings.
That’s it for now. I plan to add more as I delve deeper into finding ways on how to cross-pollinate these two passions.