Prompt: Today’s prompt was to write a poem about something you are uninterested in. “This one may seem counter-intuitive, but today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something you have absolutely no interest in. This isn’t quite the same, I think, as something you’re indifferent to. For example, I have absolutely no interest in investment strategy. Anytime anyone tries to tell me about it, I want to put my fingers in my ears and go ‘lalalalalala.’ My brain tries to shut down! This is honestly kind of funny, and I think this prompt has value precisely because it invites you to investigate some of the ‘why’ behind resolutely not giving two hoots about something.” (NaPoWriMo.net)
I must say, I could have written about income taxes, but I veered away and instead chose a subject that causes my brain to shut down, like Maureen’s does for investment strategy–the subject of graphs!
Mont Blanc & Graphs
“Data is like garbage. You’d better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.”
Mark Twain
Even the elevation of a majestic mountain range
in the Alps becomes uninteresting in a graph. It could be
a specific set of data that is depicted in a colorful bar
graph like chimes clinking on a breezy day, and still, it would
be uninteresting. And then, there is a line graph, like
the line of the mountain above the horizon or a histogram or
everyone’s favorite—the pie chart! There are more uninteresting
graphs—the statistical graph, for example. If this subject
interests you more than it does me, then read on.
There are other graphs to present data to the uninterested mind,
folks who only want to gaze upon the peaks of snow, the shapes,
the colors shifting in the sky. Or, pondering who,
if anyone, ventured to climb these cliffs and survived.
But here I speak of interesting things, and graphs are not!
A frequency distribution graph, for example, or a
trigonometric graph, or an exponential graph which
I have punished and sent to the corner with a dunce cap
for being so uninteresting! But wait, move over, you poor graph,
as there must be room in the corner for the most uninteresting
graph of all—the logarithmic—which is in the inverse of
the exponential graph. One could devise a graph with the
highest peaks in the Alps or write a poem like
Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” the pinnacle (some say) of
a British Romantic poem and certainly the pinnacle of the
French Alps, high above the vale of Chamouni where the
poet composes “under the immediate impression of the deep
and powerful feelings” that the highest peak evokes,” being
of course, Mont Blanc, but now I have veered from the
uninteresting world of graphs to something I really care about!
Jacquelyn Markham 4/15/2022
Poet Voice 