Poems Lack Reed-Solomon Codes

Like genetic mutations

Selected positively

By startled ecosystems—

Like any felix culpa—

Poems discovered sloppiness

With information could be

Conducive to a certain

Kind of information art—

Creating freaks of meaning.

The key to understanding

This game is understanding

Information’s not meaning.

Without error correction,

Great slabs of information

Must be pitted with mistakes

Over time or transmission,

Over time, in transmission.

If your interpretive goal

Is to constrain the meaning

Of heaps of information

To a singular message,

Then that is a problem, but

Let’s say life doesn’t depend

On constraining your meaning

To a singular credo,

To one interpretation.

Can we get a negative

Capability amen?

The poet becomes aware

That this ancient trait of verse—

Admitting uncertainties

To pile on the prosody,

Hints, winks, and imagery,

Thwarting any singular

Readout, even of those poems

Where clear was the intention—

Opens a new field of play

For any mind’s perception

Of some poem’s information.

How much ambiguity,

How carefully constructed,

Maximizes possible

Meanings the poet might want

Any other mind to find?

Inevitably, sometimes

This goes awry, baggily,

Absurdly, ludicrously.

Sometimes, the result’s a blur.

Sometimes, the Mona Lisa

Gets a mustache, and that’s it.

Sometimes, you get gom jabbar.

Sometimes, the haunted house works.

The poet dies. The ghosts stay,

And all those ghosts make babies.