About The Problems

I wrote The Problems more or less to record my stream of consciousness, in December 1971. Originally, it covered 21 typewritten pages. I was involved in the Rhymers’ club at Sonoma State College; we were printing a monthly twelve-sheet mimeograph poetry magazine with work by local poets that we sold for five cents. Twelve was the number of sheets that the English Department collator could handle at a time. Clifford Schwartz sold most of the magazines and proposed to the club that instead of a magazine we print a book of the same length written by me. I had this manuscript, so I reduced it to fit neatly into our page limit, drew a cover (on mimeograph stencil), and we published it for April 1972. It was my first published book.

Reading it today, I cannot explain the strange lack of grammar, the deliberate misuse of punctuation, but for me the poem has a cumulative effect that is interesting. The theme that I remember was my work on a set of problems that Doctor Frederick Luttmann had given his class on number theory. This had gotten mixed up with my thoughts on a lecture that I heard Alan Watts give on the radio.

I gave it as a gift on 19 December 1971 with this note:

• Diana,
• The book is and it rests
• little in length but perhaps you can count
• the days in it, as you count its pages,
• perhaps you can count the energy and time in it,
• counting my love, or admire its rhythm,
• a little confused perhaps that it lurks obscure,
• that there's no dialectic between different
• persons in it except by he and she is each of
• many friends, that it goes on at times without
• a reason except itself and its going on.
• Perhaps it does, but that it does
• (perhaps you haven't seen, and these in such
• obvious ways) is evidence of intension.
• Not to a purpose, although perhaps it has now,
• but an allowance, while the book is.
• Itself is its unit. It's a moment moving
• in many ways half realized and in many directions
• like life it's a continuance of separate motions.
• I blink my eyes as yours—whatever color they are—
• they are, as yours move across these words.
• The insertion creates a presence, or a question.
• Repeated, you think you follow the same line.
• If any cliche rests here, but the fact that I can
• write it, where most only say it without it,
• you know it's altered, and is, therefore,
• a modulation of my rhythm, as heartbeat, as dancing,
• as and as life.
• And as that thought moved into the paragraph,
• then the gift will move in you.
• Having moved from me, my love,
• Tom Sharp

Tom Sharp, Ph.D., holds twenty patents, works as a programmer for IBM, is a member of Seldovia Village Tribe, and is the author of numerous books.

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