I was in a Malevich exhibit about a week ago. At first, I just saw pictures from someone trying to find something to say, but after a few more paintings... I was going through the exhibit, completely euphoric. Two friends were with me - one not overly intellectual, one not too much into expressionism, apparently. To them, I must have looked like a maniac, giggling and laughing at - no, because of - a red square on a white background. It was marvellous.
I've also had my first lectures in logic and topology in the past two or three weeks. Logic gives me that very same feeling - it's the pure abstraction of manipulating symbols on paper. No unnecessary ballast of context or visualization - just symbols and rules for their manipulation. It's powerful. And topology feels similar: After getting rid of unnecessary ballast like the concept of distance, a whole world opens up in front of you - in just a few lines of dense definitions. It's very hard to describe, but it's like having the while world at the tip of your finger - absolute truth, ´just waiting for you to do a bit of thinking.
I've never seen a poem that elicited an emotional reaction in me, excluding maybe the Wintermärchen - but that was political. There have only been a few novels or short stories that really touched me - those by Kafka, Brecht and Orwell, and the last two were political, too. The three things that have ever really touched me are Kafka, music and mathematics, and the last one has been the most powerful by far.
I pity the fool who thinks mathematics is just dumb calculation.
Ninjaedit: So's the importance you attach to your poems, Th4DwArfY1. And too your mom. =P