10-11-2015, 10:36 PM
Thanks for the responses! This poem details a very personal viewpoint, so the speaker here is my actual, not-just-for-the-confessional-cred idea of myself, but of course, if I meant this to be just a good old purging, I wouldn't have posted this here -- anyway, I'm noting this because the following response at a certain part conflates the speaker I and the writer I, so a bit of discretion is advised. And so--
Well, spectrophotometry is essentially a more specific part of spectroscopy, but I'm more familiar with how spectrophotometry itself works (as in, the procedures and all that biz -- the specifics of the actual physics, I'm not too deep into) than with, well, other spectroscopic methods. Basically, it's spectroscopy but with more visible wavelengths. Anyway--
This does bank a good deal on the reader's knowledge of how spectrophotometry generally works, though I admit that I got (or rather, put in) a lot of the details rather wrong. But before that, I must note that the poem does have a, er, structure, thus the somewhat awkward line breaks: almost every line has an odd number of syllables. It doesn't really come through in the sound, but I thought it was a fair, if mild, way of playing with the idea of science mathematically restricting us -- I'll probably do away with it. Now then--
On the first few lines: generally, that's how it operates. Now, if my memory serves me right, spectrophotometry works by measuring the amount of light and the wavelengths of light that passes through a substance in an instrument -- certain materials exhibit different interactions with light, so that they absorb certain wavelengths and let through most others. This is generally visualized as a spectrum "broken by streaks of blackness", though I forget if it's the streaks of blackness that is the light absorbed or not -- however, the instrument itself shows a line graph, plus a bunch of numbers like absorbance, transmittance, and others I forget. Essentially, yes, the poem compares measuring life to how the machine works, though it also very very subtly criticizes empirical thought, at least as a process through which life itself must be measured -- the poem's born out of my growing resentment at science.
After "traces" down to the last line of the second stanza: I do consider those to be problem lines, too. They deal with the ideas to be fully elaborated on by the second stanza, so, at least to me, they seem rather out of place -- in fact, the "pillar" there was supposed to be the cuvette, the glass container where the substance put in is to be measured, but obviously that's not what it now refers to.
On the next stanza: at that point, I'm just interchanging the ideas of time, light, and the matter being measured, and the poem I think is clear enough on what I think on those. The "message" is ultimately the purpose of the whole experiment; and yes, the graph also signifies so. This part might need a bit more support from the earlier stanza, though, in order to be clearer.
On the very first and the last four lines: yes, those even felt rather tacked-on when I first wrote this. I'll probably just remove them.
And now, the new edit. This is in no way close to finished, if I considered this alone: this just crystallizes the poem as the whole extended metaphor thing, for the sake of, I hope, easier comprehension. The aforementioned criticism of empirical thought does not, I think, show in this one as much, and the structure of the poem doesn't seem to have the same kind of force as the earlier. The hold of the syllabic structure has also been loosened, though for the most part it looks like it's still there. Oh well.
Well, spectrophotometry is essentially a more specific part of spectroscopy, but I'm more familiar with how spectrophotometry itself works (as in, the procedures and all that biz -- the specifics of the actual physics, I'm not too deep into) than with, well, other spectroscopic methods. Basically, it's spectroscopy but with more visible wavelengths. Anyway--
This does bank a good deal on the reader's knowledge of how spectrophotometry generally works, though I admit that I got (or rather, put in) a lot of the details rather wrong. But before that, I must note that the poem does have a, er, structure, thus the somewhat awkward line breaks: almost every line has an odd number of syllables. It doesn't really come through in the sound, but I thought it was a fair, if mild, way of playing with the idea of science mathematically restricting us -- I'll probably do away with it. Now then--
On the first few lines: generally, that's how it operates. Now, if my memory serves me right, spectrophotometry works by measuring the amount of light and the wavelengths of light that passes through a substance in an instrument -- certain materials exhibit different interactions with light, so that they absorb certain wavelengths and let through most others. This is generally visualized as a spectrum "broken by streaks of blackness", though I forget if it's the streaks of blackness that is the light absorbed or not -- however, the instrument itself shows a line graph, plus a bunch of numbers like absorbance, transmittance, and others I forget. Essentially, yes, the poem compares measuring life to how the machine works, though it also very very subtly criticizes empirical thought, at least as a process through which life itself must be measured -- the poem's born out of my growing resentment at science.
After "traces" down to the last line of the second stanza: I do consider those to be problem lines, too. They deal with the ideas to be fully elaborated on by the second stanza, so, at least to me, they seem rather out of place -- in fact, the "pillar" there was supposed to be the cuvette, the glass container where the substance put in is to be measured, but obviously that's not what it now refers to.
On the next stanza: at that point, I'm just interchanging the ideas of time, light, and the matter being measured, and the poem I think is clear enough on what I think on those. The "message" is ultimately the purpose of the whole experiment; and yes, the graph also signifies so. This part might need a bit more support from the earlier stanza, though, in order to be clearer.
On the very first and the last four lines: yes, those even felt rather tacked-on when I first wrote this. I'll probably just remove them.
And now, the new edit. This is in no way close to finished, if I considered this alone: this just crystallizes the poem as the whole extended metaphor thing, for the sake of, I hope, easier comprehension. The aforementioned criticism of empirical thought does not, I think, show in this one as much, and the structure of the poem doesn't seem to have the same kind of force as the earlier. The hold of the syllabic structure has also been loosened, though for the most part it looks like it's still there. Oh well.
Or, to put this all frankly, yes I meant spectrophotometry specifically, and for the most part I agree with the critiques. Thus, I ran the poem through one, and voila, but since part of the voice is lost with this edit, I'll probably remix the parts again. Probably--My judgement's still unsure, so I'll bank more on your feedback.