"id think 'wonder" -- navigating the relationships and dependencies of complexity, simplicity, ambiguity...
I want to map a constellation of concepts here— “complexity,” “ambiguity,” “vagueness,” “regularity,” “redundancy,” “depth,” “complicatedness,” and “convolutedness”— as they relate to poetics (form/structure) and hermeneutics (interpretation).
I hope that exploring this semiotic cosmos might shed some light on a recurring debate I’ve seen: how “simple” is the poem? My aim is not to settle this debate, but to sharpen some of its central features so that we can better understand what is actually at stake and at odds in the first place. In particular, I want to consider these matters in terms of the goals and constraints of the creator himself: the necessity of constructing 1) a set of somewhat (or temporarily) difficult but ultimately resolvable obfuscations; 2) a specific, accurate, and precise final meaning which can be deduced or extracted by a non-expert audience; and 3) an outcome that inspires reader confidence in the certainty and non-ambiguity of that final meaning. We know that some of these factors contributed to design features in the hunt as a whole (e.g. the “checkpoint” and potentially other “trinkets” for lack of a better term). But we might also assume and hope these factors have shaped the construction of the poem itself.
Justin has made a few comments on this subject…
1) When asked, “Is an advanced degree or deep technical knowledge needed to solve this poem?” he answered, “I've done my best to design this in a way that is accessible by anybody. You don't need any advanced degrees. Any reasonable person that spends a bit of time researching online and getting a baseline understanding of me is on equal footing” (JIBLE 5.0).
2) When asked “Which part of your personality influenced the poem the most? The part of you who is an engineer or the part of you who is an enthusiastic explorer?” he answered, “I'd say the part of me that embraces childlike wonder the most” (X Marks the Pod YouTube transcript).
3) When asked, “Do you think [people] are looking too deep? Is it simpler than people might think?” he answered, “That's the tricky part with any obfuscated text - how far is too far? It's sort of like hiking - what's around the next bend? How far is too far to go? I think the line is different for everybody. I'm hesitant to say people are taking it to too much of an extreme. I don't think that's the case, but it's probably safe to say that people in certain areas are diving in much deeper than they need to. But it's all a matter of perspective” (JIBLE 5.0).
Some folks have interpreted statements like those above to mean that the poem is “simple.” But I think we need to spend a bit more time figuring out what “simple” means before we decide whether to expect this of “Beyond the Map’s Edge.” Many things in our world are simple to operate but very complex in design— I can drive a car quite easily, but I have no idea how to engineer a car. Conversely, some things can be very simple in theory but extremely challenging to exercise or perform— meditation is simplicity by definition (to empty or focus one’s mind) but requires committed practice (sometimes a lifelong dedication). I could give you the instructions “turn right at the next stoplight” or I could tell you to “turn left at the next stoplight and then again at each of the following three intersections and then turn right at that stoplight when you meet it again.” The latter is a FAR more complicated structure (unnecessarily so!) and only slightly more difficult to compute and execute. The final outcome is the same even if the experience/process is quite different. But the redundancy of the steps itself appears to increase structural/procedural complexity while failing to reduce ambiguity and, in fact, actually increasing the likelihood of confusion or incomprehension. These various examples reveal how “simplicity” and “complexity” can come in different forms as well as how “ambiguity” and “difficulty” are not synonymous terms. Additionally, there is no necessary universal relationship between, say, “complexity” and “ambiguity” or “simplicity” and “difficulty” etc. but rather the link depends on what we actually mean by these terms in any particular given case (though, if possible, I would like to see whether any definite connections can be made between certain types of complexity— e.g. internal, structural, etc.— and particular forms of ambiguity— e.g. productive, resolvable, etc.).
So, is the poem “simple”? I have always found it interesting that realist painting requires so much technical knowledge and expert skill, but the interpretive range of such artwork is usually much more limited than cubist abstractions which can often yield infinite meanings from extremely simple and constrained sets of elements. Or think about how simple logographic languages are at the word unit (a single symbol) but how complex they are at a system level (tens of thousands of symbols to remember and use). Conversely, each word in an alphabetic language requires multiple symbols (letters) which are each fairly arbitrary (abstracted beyond pictorial imitation) and are often weirdly ordered (especially chimeras like English with hybrid etymologies) and require additional ordering rules (syntax) and symbols (punctuation) for sense-making at the sentence level. This is complicated! But also, this combinatorial system makes for relative simplicity and regularity in other ways. The game of chess offers another example where strategy and gameplay are famously complex and infinite, but the rules, board, and pieces are fairly stripped down.
Let’s imagine the poem is “simple,” then. What could this mean? 1) Perhaps no technical skill is required (advanced cryptography, complex geometry, etc.). 2) Maybe no expert knowledge is needed (niche history, insider/local-only geography, etc.). 3) It could be the poetic structure isn’t elaborate or manifold (a point-by-point or “connect the dots” clue order, a one-to-one signifier-to-signified of clue interpretation/exchange). 4) Or it might mean that poetic techniques are limited and/or obvious (e.g. only allusion, no metaphor or relevant alliteration, etc.). How does Justin’s emphasis on “childlike wonder” inflect this question about the nature of the poem’s “simplicity”? Children are not yet technical experts or warehouses of “facts.” They are not laden with hard skills, rigorous methods, or formal theories. Though they often do take extreme pleasure in rattling off lists of facts they have acquired, endlessly ask “why?” or “what if?”, betray no bias or limits to the subjects of their curiosity, reveal very little embarrassment about socially “inappropriate” questions, and compete passionately with other knowledge keepers (“did you know?” “I told you so!”). In this way, they enliven a sense of wonder and playfulness in the process of research itself. An attitude/orientation of “childlike wonder” thus likely relieves us of numbers 1 and 2 above, but it also leaves 3 and 4 open… we might even begin to see how the imaginative breadth and flexibility that children often possess should prepare us for a certain degree of depth and complexity when it comes to these matters of poetic structure and technique. We are talking about world-building… but this process which transforms a kitchen floor into a lava field also requires the construction of rules, regularities, certain rigidities through the process of play itself. In poetry, the self-structuring play of repetitions and differences becomes the emergent property of “structure.” This internal complexity (where we need not outsource complexity via “rabbit holes”) can also be called aesthetic “depth” where the poem takes on a certain multi-dimensionality. We are talking about a shared enterprise between writer and reader or text and interpretation where we all contribute to the shading and relief by way of a counterfactual logic…. As they say in Sesame Street, “I wonder… What if? Let’s try!”
ee cummings is the master of conditional statements. In “If” he writes, “If freckles were lovely, and day was night,/ And measles were nice and a lie warn’t a lie,/ Life would be delight,—/ But things couldn’t go right/ For in such a sad plight/ I wouldn’t be I.” As it turns out, I adore freckles more than any other human bodily feature… For the sake of our exercise, I will put it this way: freckles mark particularity and thus reduce ambiguity by increasing complexity (I know without a doubt whose freckles to kiss, those kissable freckles I know so well)… this is one of the ways I believe JP yields final interpretive certainty and specificity through his poem.
[If you’re bored already and don’t want a lengthy example of how ambiguity can be both constructed by and resolvable through the internal complexity of poetic structure, then jump to the TLDR summary at the end of this post…] Let’s consider another ee cummings poem as an example (see image of “I’d think ‘wonder” above). What is this poem about? I ask my students to enter the poem (and any poem) like a surprise, without a preformulated expectation, so that we can learn what and how it means on its own terms. I ask them to list things they notice and then to organize those things under categories that emerge from the data itself:
[Confusing punctuation (no full stops until the very end, inconsistent comma placement, open brackets and quotation marks), irregular capitalization (lower case “i” but capitalized “And” mid-sentence), repetition (“if”), no rhyme scheme, varying stanza lengths and line spacing, concrete imagery (“bats and mice,” “houses,” “little wings,” “jam,” “dark stairs,” “hands”), vague or contradictory imagery (“thing,” “therehere”), first and second person voice, mostly simple monosyllabic terms, etc.]
On the face of it, the poem might seem utter nonsense! Certainly quite ambiguous… What could it mean? But once we start bringing these elements above together with attention to how they are structured within the poem, we begin to understand some things. Firstly, the speaker seems likely to be a child. Note the mixture of concrete and vague or contradictory imagery— simple domestic or everyday objects which would be familiar to children are vivid and repeated whereas highly abstract or relational concepts are conveyed gesturally. The fragmented appearance of stanzas and lines replicates the frenzied thought process of a confused or frightened child while the inconsistent punctuation and capitalization reveal a mind not yet regulated by the formalities of writing.
Likewise, from the first- and second-person voice, we can understand the poem to be dramatizing a scene between two people from the perspective of this child. Who is the “you” of this poem then? We don’t meet them until the final three stanzas— "i say 'wont you' (remembering)/ knowing that you/ are afraid 'go first' of dreams and little// bats & mice(and// you,/you say 'let's' going in/ 'take/ hands' smiling 'coming up/ these dark stairs." The “i” asks “you” questions like “wont you” whereas the “you” utters imperatives such as “let’s” which suggests they are relatively commanding. Likewise, we can remember how the function of quotation marks are to distinguish sources of speech (e.g. diegetic versus extradiegetic, narrator versus character, etc.). Since most of the complex and multi-syllabic terms are contained within quotation marks (e.g. “twilight”), we can deduce that the “you” interlocutor in this poem is an adult.
Now that we know the lay of the land, we can begin to make some sense of the fragmentation and impose some regularity on the seemingly chaotic punctuation. Note how reading the poem cyclically returns much of the poem’s grammatical sense… the open bracket following “twilight’)” in the second stanza actually completes (and thus “closes”) the bracket left open at the end of the poem with “bats & mice(and”. On the other hand, we might also consider the singular full-stop that punctuates the end of the poem conclusively with “these dark stairs.” This full stop resists the circular reading and cuts the poem off with a more traditional linear reading from top to bottom. Finally, though, the open quotation mark at the end of the poem (“'coming up/ these dark stairs.”) creates tension with both of these alternate poetic structures… no closure is achieved by circling back to the beginning or by completing at the linear end… the structure here is a radical openness or infinitude where ontological distinctions (such as the diegetic versus extradiegetic levels) and the boundaries constructive of identity (e.g. narrator versus character, self versus other) collapse. We begin to discern a superposition of structural states— circular, linear, or open-ended— where each coexist with but also contradict the others. By the way, isn’t it interesting that these three options for reading the poem’s structure reflect the total possible range of frameworks for securing “knowledge” that encapsulate all of western epistemology (coherentism, foundationalism, and infinitism respectively)?
We are now gaining a sense of both the depicted scene and the structural logic of the poem from which we can extrapolate these larger meanings of theme or effect (e.g. a meditation or thought experiment on “epistemology”). Let’s turn to the seams between these three structures to see more. First, the opening line "i'd think 'wonder// if' if/ i were a/ child" raises a productive ambiguity about the identity of the speaker as well as the very nature of conditionals or counterfactuals. The phrase “if/ i were a/ child” suggests the speaker may not be a child (why would a child have to imagine themselves as if they were one?) and yet the fact that the child figure is one who would “think 'wonder// if'” plays off the following “if” statement (“if/ i were a/ child") to reassert the speaker as a child (consider the biconditional: 1. A<-->B, 2. B, 3. Therefore A; where A is being a child and B is wondering “if”). We come to wonder… What is a child? What does it mean for a child to imagine being a child? Is imagination the purview of children? Are children unavailable to themselves as children? Is the “child” identity and perspective constructed by the adult in an imaginative retrospective? Where does this place the reader who “wonders” and “imagines” all these hypotheticals?
Now, how about the closing line? The imagery of stairs, hands, and darkness conspire to create a metaphor about aging (ascension, enlightenment, entrance are all connected with the wisdom of growing older and learning)… "you say 'let's' going in/ 'take/ hands' smiling 'coming up/ these dark stairs." But the metaphor is confused with itself— the stairs are “dark,” “‘coming up” is either spoken description or character action depending on how one reads the open quotation marks (since the poem is focalized through the “i” it is unclear whether we are “coming up” or already “up”), the injunction “let’s” and “take hands” suggests a developmental symmetry between the “i” and the “you” which conflicts with the simple adult-child dynamic originally postulated. Who are we? Where are we? Just as confused as when we started? I hope not. What I want to suggest is that the poem’s STRUCTURAL COMPLEXITY forces the reader to make three distinct interpretations of the poem at once and with irresolvable internal tension— linear, circular, and open-ended readings of the poem— each of which construct divergent identities for speaker and interlocutor (child versus adult, self or other)… and ultimately work with one another by working against one another for us to be able to imagine different epistemological frameworks (coherentism, foundationalism, and infinitism respectively). The poem is a laboratory in which to conduct thought experiments about the nature and limitations of knowledge and/or imagination. We are and are not a child… this statement is a logical contradiction but, as the poem proves, a performative possibility (even if somewhat beyond the scope of sensible imagination)… the poetic structure(s), that is, can take us to places “beyond the map’s edge” of the poetic content itself.
I know this is long— I’m almost done!— but I wanted to walk through this exercise to make a couple of points palpable. Firstly, poetic structure can be and do things beyond that which is materially evident as “content.” As Cleanth Brooks writes in “The Heresy of Paraphrase,” “the term ‘structure’ is certainly not altogether satisfactory as a term. One means by it something far more internal than the metrical pattern, say, or than the sequence of images. The structure meant is certainly not ‘form’ in the conventional sense in which we think of form as a kind of envelope which ‘contains’ the ‘content.’ The structure obviously is everywhere conditioned by the nature of the material which goes into the poem. The nature of the material sets the problem to be solved, and the solution is the ordering of the material.” Secondly and somewhat relatedly, poetic structure can be complex (e.g. highly technical or constrictive rhyme scheme and metrical patterns associated with certain literary forms and genres such as the Shakespearean or Spenserian sonnet, or whatever) but can also stage complexity (as in this case where cummings reckons with epistemological paradox) or can demand complex thought processes (as in this case where cummings forces readers to execute/compute three distinct and contradictory interpretations at the same time in order to really comprehend what the poem is all about). I also want to point out that the “if, then” conditional reasoning chain we’ve been exploring here is fairly “simple” in itself, with many arguing that propositional logic can be boiled down to one rule, the law of identity (or A is A), which can somehow (incredibly, bewilderingly!) be internally recombined to form countless “other” rules (law of excluded middle, law of non-contradiction, etc.) with potentially infinite complexity (countless fallacies, deductive inferences, syllogisms, etc.) But some imaginations falter at the conditional “if” before even getting into these deductive inferences… some folks really struggle with the nature of counterfactuals (and probably have a bone to pick with cummings for that reason). I won’t share my full solve here, but I will admit that some of the aspects of “complexity” and “simplicity” and “productive ambiguity” etc. do feature very prominently in my interpretation of the poem. If anyone wants to share their own thoughts on this matter, or if anyone is willing to tie these ideas more closely to the BtME poem itself, I encourage the conversation!
TLDR: “Beyond the Map’s Edge” may be described in terms of “deep simplicity” where internal complexity is achieved at the level of poetic structure (not extractable as discrete elements of conceptually challenging content nor outsourced via long chains of “rabbit hole” inferencing to niche facts or expert-only fields of research). This kind of internal complexity can actually reduce what I will call “unproductive ambiguity” even while it may work to obfuscate with “productive ambiguity” (which hides truth/answers until the reader can use/align/triangulate other elements within the poem to clarify, nullify, or settle the indeterminacy). Think of it this way— the correspondence of the term “wisdom” in the poem with the town of “Wisdom” which bears some significant personal relevance to JP is an extremely “simple” reading of the poem. But this one-to-one structure of exchange would yield an ungodly degree of unproductive ambiguity… do I now have to find all the place names containing “wisdom,” “truth,” “hope,” etc.? How do I deduce which of those places emerging all over the map are more likely or valid than others? No. The right kind of complexity works to reduce ambiguity once all of the components are finally “resolved”… even while the final resolution of those components maintains a certain internal “tension.” This is what I might call “internal complexity” or “structural complexity” or “interpretive/hermeneutic complexity” or “deep simplicity” (which is also the title of a book by John Gribbin about how extreme complexity in the form of “chaos” emerges from some very simple Newtonian laws and in deterministic but nonlinear systems… another relevant example, perhaps, of what I am describing here).
And now for something (not so) completely different: Anyone here from the fields of information science, communications, cryptography, etc. (or even cartography) who might be able to offer a more robust (lol, “simplified” or syllogistic) explanation of what I am trying to get at here? Would also love to hear about counterarguments or caveats to these points.