Mothmaw Press

Water Hoarding Mothmaw Press

This poem consists of the word water and nothing else. It is an experiment into the line between education and art. It is inspired by the fight between science and faith, by the numbers we may never comprehend and the theories we may never prove nor disprove. "water water" - page 79 It is more fact than theory, but only through asserting itself in the physical world. It exists only in four dimensions at a time but never any more. "water water water water" - page 276 It is not held in memory, nor is it powerful or precious. It is not creative in itself, but is instead a means to measure and to comprehend. Vast numbers are immeasurable to the human mind, but words are stacked on shelves and sold across counters. Words are less abstract and can be used to measure. Take 1ml of substance. Put it in 99ml of water. Mix and extract 1ml. Repeat twenty times. That is what we have done here with words. 217000 words printed one million times will equal a 20X dilution. One in 217,000,000,000 of those words will be different, but it may never be found. The copy that it may or may not be in will probably never be sold. Because nobody would buy a book that was just water, would they? "water water water" - page 312 This book was put together to provide a physical representation of otherwise incomprehensibly large numbers. It uses a recognizable subject matter to frame the numbers in a familiar space, then drags them screaming from obscurity and forces them into the real world. This book is a decent prop for explaining large numbers, for weighing down bookshelves and holding open fire exits. It is not much use for anything else, and doesn't intend or even pretend to be. Maybe you could read it to your friends at a dinner party, it's certainly an ice breaker. If you want to read the word water two hundred and seventeen thousand times, this is the book for you.