The eye speaks

What the poet has to say to the engineer

I know what I do as a poet is not valued as much by this society as what I do as an engineer—if salaries are truly a valid measure of worth—but I have a few things to say about the engineering design process, from a poet's perspective, that might be useful to engineers and designers.

• Just as every good poem has a structure; every design should have one. Structure makes poems easy to read, understand, and recite. Similarly, lining up or "balancing" the position of chips on your schematic, or adjusting the tabs and line breaks in your software or firmware listing ("beautifying the code") can only help during reviewing, editing and preparation of the final draft.
• Speaking of editing; please be ruthless and unforgiving. The poem, circuit, or firmware is more important than your ego. As one of my English teachers put it: "get out of your work." Your peers, managers—and certainly your customers—have a right to decide if your work meets the grade. Never forget this.
• Of course, your peers, managers, and critics should also remember that you are not the poem or design. They should remember that their criticism should be limited to only the things that you can fix. Comments about you, your motives, or your personality have no place in an honest review of your work. Isn’t the objective to make the end product the best it can be?
• Learn the tools of the trade. Alliteration, rhyme, meter, metaphor, simile, etc. are all tools of poetry. If you don’t understand them, you are limited in what you can create. The same is true of engineering. Stay current. Learn new engineering techniques so you can add them to your toolbox. Only people with open minds and full toolboxes can make creative choices.
• Learn the rules of the trade. Hardware designers are constrained by certain laws of physics, just as poets (and software developers) are constrained by the syntax, spelling and grammar of the language they are using. Remember that there is more than enough "room" to create art within the rules, and that to violate them is to accept the risk that your poem, software or circuit may not work. You can only work at the edge of technology or art if you have some idea where that edge is.
• Sometimes I seek criticism of a piece from peer poets and writers. You should do the same with your designs. Often a fresh pair of eyes can spot mistakes and problems you miss.

Finally, if you are afraid of making mistakes or failing, choice a career other than poetry or engineering. True art rises like a lotus flower out of the mire the first draft. Revision makes this metamorphosis possible. The rough draft, first schematic, or first pass of the code is only the beginning.

© 2000 Jesse N. Alexander