Holding Logic and Imagination Together

     Recently Google led me to a recent and fascinating article about Jordanian poet Dr. Zaina Al-Qasem, a Jordanian scholar, who combines data science with creativity and is also a published poet.  For her, mathematics and poetry share thought patterns — both driven by interpretation, structure, and the search for meaning, but through different lenses.

Here are a few reflective lines of Zaina Al-Qasem's verse -- found in the article linked-to above  -- lines that capture both introspection and intent.

Shaped like a SNOWFLAKE

     Choosing a shape for a poem leads to restrictions on the numbers and lengths of words -- and sometimes this generously promotes creativity.  Moving through the chilly winter season, I have discovered this poem -- "The Six-Cornered Snowflake"  in POETRY (December, 1989) by poet and editor  John Frederick Nims (1913-99).  ENJOY!   

Math Ideas Expressed in Limericks

When you have time, a fascinating website to visit and browse is OEDILF  -- The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form.   

Here is a sample:    

      cuproid by Recumbentman (Limerick #89414)

            Tetrahedrons are bounded by four
            Triangular faces, no more.
            If on each one of those
            A pyramid rose,
            A cuproid would then take the floor.   

Student Math-Poetry Contest -- submit by 1/20/26

     The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is again sponsoring a Math-Poetry Contest for students -- inviting submission of poems up to 20 lines in length in three admission categories:  

      Middle School      High School       College  

Information about how to submit entries -- along with wonderful results from past contests  -- is available at this link.

     The following poem (which is found online here -- along with other winners) by Nora McKinstry (Edmonds Heights K-12 S) was the Middle School winner in 2025.  

Effects of Counting

      A recent visit to the Poetry Foundation website brought me to poems by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) -- and I counted sadly as I read his poem, "We Are Seven."  I offer its opening stanzas below (and the complete poem -- 17 stanzas -- is available here.) 

We Are Seven       by William Wordsworth

          ———A simple Child,

          That lightly draws its breath,

          And feels its life in every limb,

          What should it know of death?  

Can Poems Affect Students' Math-Attitudes?

     For some students, math is fun BUT . . . if we don't understand something that can keep it from being fun.  For those who DO NOT FIND MATH FUN, it is important for the rest of us to try to change that attitude.  One useful viewpoint is that math need not be treated as an isolated subject . . . it is connected to our lives in VERY MANY ways.  And sometimes, as this blog's postings illustrate, poetry offers non-threatening ways of making connections.

     One of my recent discoveries is the website We Are Teachers where I found a collection of 38 mathy poems -- a dozen for elementary school students and the rest for middle and high students.  Here is a sample from the elementary school group.

Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful -- -- again!

      Fourteen years ago, back in October of 2011, I posted a poem of mine entitled, "Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful" (at this link).  Written more than thirty years ago, this continues to be one of my favorites of my mathy poems.   I offer a portion of it below.

       Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful     by JoAnne Growney

             Timidly I ask
             each one I meet if they
             find mathematics beautiful
             or useful, and each one dares to say,
             "Useful, of course. I use it every day."
             And if I seem to want a proof,
             they all go on to tell  
             that daily they subtract and add
             to keep a checkbook; sometimes also
             they multiply to find how many squares
             they need to tile the kitchen floor.

Mathy Lines from the Poet Laureate

     Born in New York City (1950) and of Asian heritage, poet Arthur Sze is the 25th US Poet Laureate (named on September 15, 2025) and the first Asian American to hold that position.   In the October 20, 2025 issue of The New Yorker, we find Sze's poem, "Library of Congress,"  which opens with these somewhat mathy lines:

        You peer down a lit corridor
        on the fifth tier of stacks
        where a million books breathe
        on shelves, here's a book
        on neutrinos, captured in Antarctica,
        here's another on solar flares.
        A curator displays a book
        in Vai script and points to a triangle
        with two dots, you wonder . . . 

Mathematics organizes libraries!

More poetry from Sze can be found here;  
scroll down below the bio to find titles and links.

Poetry Comics Month -- with a bit of Math

     Poetry-comic-artist Grant Snider posts wonderfully illustrated and entertaining verses online -- on X (Twitter) @grantdraws -- and sometimes his postings are mathy. Here is a link to an interview with Snider.  Snider has indicated in his postings that our current month of October is Poetry Comics Month,  Here is a link to one of his past poetry-comics-month postings -- and below I offer one of his illustrated mathy haiku.

World Nursery Rhyme Week

 On X I learned that this week -- November 10-14, 2025 -- is World Nursery Rhyme Week, and I searched and found this website that offers information about the week and these "5 official rhymes for 2025":

    Monday, 10th -- Sing a Song of Sixpence  
         Tuesday, 11th -- Humpty Dumpty
    Wednesday, 12th -- When I Was One (I played the drum)
         Thursday, 13th -- I Hear Thunder
     Friday, 14th -- Two Little Dickie Birds

Here at this website are all of the above except "Two Little Dickie Birds" -- which I offer a version of below.  (Here in Wikipedia is more about that rhyme.)

Simplifying Mathematics with Poetry

 At this link, I found the following math-poetry information:

      JOHANNESBURG - Some good news for struggling mathematics students:

Award-winning author Botshelo Mthomboti has a solution for you.   In her book, Poetic Atmosphere of Mathematics, Mthomboti simplifies the subject through poetry. The 22-year-old Financial Management graduate has also penned two other books, A Black Child Transformed by Accounting, and The Poetic Atmosphere of Income Tax.

     Here is a link to a YouTube video of a news story -- entitled "Poetic Solutions to Complex Problems" -- that tells of Mthomboti and shares her poem entitled "Multiplication and Division of Variables."    And here is more about Mthomboti.

THANK YOU, Botshelo Mthomboti, for the enthusiastic energy you give to mathematics.  

"Who Counts, Counts" -- by Stephanie Strickland

       Stephanie Strickland is a poet whom I know and much admire -- and her work contains a rich variety of math-poetry creations; her poems have been featured in several posts in this blog (Here's a link to those postings.)  Today I had the good fortune to refind another of her poems -- not yet posted herein -- and I offer it below.  

     Who Counts, Counts      by Stephanie Strickland

          Baby and you
          --and me,
          we will make three,

                 but baby-and-me
                 are different; we're two-
                 who-are-one.  

Geometry and Poetry -- with a Pumpkin

     Posted on X by talented and prolific STEAM blogger, Heidi Bee Roemer (@poetweet4), this Halloween poem relates to the geometry of a carved pumpkin face -- with mathematical shapes. 

An activist children's author,  Romer promote literacy, shares STEAM resources & hosts contests for college, high school & jr. high students. Publications include 9 kids' books, and more than 400 poems.  Her website is steampoweredpoetry.com.   

Math Class -- featuring GIRLS

      I recently learned of a book by creative writer Kellie Krumrie entitled Math Class (Calamari Press, 2022) -- a book of essays that feature teen-age girls.  Exploring further I found poetry by Krumrie in La Vague -- an online feminist journal that has ceased publication BUT retains online records of previously published work.    

Here is one of Krumrie's poems which I am enjoying puzzling over!

c e m e n t   /  e m m y  n o e t h e r   by Kellie Krumrie

‘She had the faculty of visualizing remote, very complex connections without resorting to concrete examples.’

Can math be funny?

      Recently I discovered the website teacher planet and found there a variety of math-related resources including humorous versions of definitions of math terms.

Using a poetry-stanza format, I have included several of these "poetic" definitions below:

          Math is like love;
          a simple idea,
          but it can get complicated.  

Genius grant for Math-Woman

     Mathematician Lauren K. Williams (PhD ’05 MIT, currently Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University) has won a 2025 MacArthur Fellowship, a prestigious honor often called the “genius grant.” The award is presented annually by the MacArthur Foundation to “talented individuals in a variety of fields who have shown exceptional originality in and dedication to their creative pursuits.”  The MacArthur Foundation praised Williams for “uncovering transformative connections between algebraic combinatorics and problems in other areas of math and physics.”

Student Contest -- STEAM-Themed Poems

      A varied and energetic and very valuable voice for the importance of connections between mathematics and poetry is STEAM-Poetry advocate Heidi Bee Roemer.  Here is a link to her focus on mathy poems.  (STEAM is a popular abbreviation for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics.)

Recently Romer has opened registration for a STEAM Poetry Video Contest. Between now and April 30, 2026, students can choose a STEAM-themed poem (from a selection of 40 poems), create short videos for their younger peers, and enter them in the contest.  Contest details are here.

     And here is a sample poem by Roemer -- a mathy poem written for elementary-school students.

The Geometry of Verse

     Here in the US, we have a new poet laureate (announced by the Library of Congress on September 15, 2025)  --  and this selected poet Arthur Sze sees poetry as a unifying agent -- "verse can bring us together".

     Sze is a poet whose work I value reading -- but its links to mathematics are gentle and scattered.  Here is a sample --  the closing lines from Sze's poem "Sight Lines".  (The complete poem is available here at poets.org.)  

Reversible Verse

      A recent discovery that I have found fascinating is a reversible poem -- a poem with word/line choices that read the same from the last to the first as from the first to the last.  Author Marilyn Singer offers the following sample on her website from her collection Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse Poems – illustrated by Josee Masse; Dutton/Penguin, 2010.

In this unique collection of reversible verse, classic fairy tales are turned on their heads. Literally. Read these clever poems from top to bottom. Then reverse the lines and read from bottom to top to give these well-loved stories a delicious new spin.  Word patterns remain the same -- with changes only in punctuation and capitalization.

                    IN REVERSE       by Marilyn Singer     

Technology and Poetry and . . .

Recently I found this online article in the Bangi News:

            Why poetry has lost its lustre in the modern world

It offers the following forlorn math-and-poetry view:

          Today, with schools pushing 
           math and science over the arts, 
           poetry feels like an old, boring puzzle.
           Why spend time decoding a poem 
           when you can watch a 15-second reel 
           that makes you laugh?   

Is this view useful?      Explore more in the Bangi News here.   

Pope Leo was a Mathematics Major . . .

      Recently I learned via a post on X -Twitter by Anthony Bonato (@Anthony_Bonato) that the new Roman Catholic Pope Leo was, in college, a math major.  (For Wikipedia's info on Pope Leo, follow this link.)  I celebrate this with one of my favorite poetic forms, a syllable-count triangle.

         Math
         is a
         discipline
         that can prepare
         for leadership and 
         holiness -- Pope Leo!

Count the votes . . .

      Today I have been thinking about election results and the role that non-voters have in deciding elections and I have shaped my words into the following syllable-count triangle:

          Count
          the votes.
          Elections
          are decided
          by we who vote -- and
          also by those who don't!  

Poems to Enjoy on YouTube

     This is a quick and brief post BUT its shortness may give you some time to explore these richly populated links:  

         Math Poems on YouTube;

        Math Songs for Kids -- on YouTube.

Bridging Worlds with Mathematics

      Each year the Association for Women in Mathematics holds an essay contest -- inviting middle school and high school and college students each to interview a math woman and to write about it.  The names of 2025 contest winners -- and links to their essays -- are available here at this link.

     One of my delights as I browsed through the contest results was to find male as well as female essay winners.  Here is a link to "Bridging Worlds through Mathematics"  -- an essay by Alan Zhang of Francis Richmond Middle School, telling of an interview with Alena Erchenko (Dartmouth College), that won first place in the Grades 6-8 contest group.  And this link leads to "Where Dreams Can Take You" -- an essay by Peter Holman of Frances C, Richmond Middle School telling of an interview with Kim Luke (Simbex).

Micro Poetry

What is Micro Poetry?

Micropoetry (a term sometimes offered as two terms) is an ultra-short form of poetry, typically under 25 words or 140 characters, blending creative brevity with precise language characterized by sharp imagery and emotional depth while allowing diverse interpretations.  (Definition found at this website.)

Both mathematics and poetry are condensed languages, endeavoring to say much in a few words or symbols and so, when I recently came across the term "Micropoetry' -- aka micro-poetry or micropoetry -- I became curious (and I thought of Haiku) and I decided to to explore. 

Using the Golden Ratio to Construct Poems

     Poetic constraints such as syllable-counts and rhymes may seem at first glance to pose difficulties in constructing a poem BUT those of us who have explored using constraints very often find that meeting the imposed constraints guides us to new and creative thinking.  At the July, 2025 Bridges Conference, Sarah Glaz and Lisa Lajeunesse offered a workshop that explored writing strategies derived from this ratio.  (Here is a link to the abstract for the workshop -- and at that link you also can download a pdf of the complete paper.)  Below I offer a couple of samples of their "golden ratio" poems.

Learning by Writing

The above statement comes from a blog posting by Denise Gaskins -- in her blog, Let's Play Math, at this link.  Here's more from that post:

Journaling Prompt 20: Math Poetry: The Square

More of Humanistic Mathematics

     Last week I mentioned the current (July, 2025) issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics and today I want to again call attention to the array of poetry that is in this issue; here is a ink to the Table of Contents and the photo below offers a list of poetry titles and authors.  (Visit the JHM website; explore and enjoy; several delightful stanzas from Vijay Fafat and Cristian Ramirez Rodriguez  were offered in this previous blog post.)

In a 2023 issue, in the JHM Section entitled The World of Mathematics, two of the eight articles involve poetry -- the 2nd and third articles named below; to get to the Table of Contents and access to the articles, follow this link.

Celebrating Poetry at 2025 BRIDGES Conference

     A lavish and wonderful celebration of connections between mathematics and the arts is the annual international BRIDGES, Mathematics and the Arts Conference.  This year's conference took place last month (July, 2025 in Eindhoven, Netherlands) and one of its special events was a poetry reading.  

     Information about the poets and sample poems are available here at the website of Sarah Glaz (mathematician-poet and coordinator of the BRIDGES readings).  Below I have included one of these very special poems:

View no Fiery Night        by Marian Christie 

No
one
went to   
the tower
to vie with the foe.
Fretting, worn, we rove in night fog ––
the ring, the theft, the vow forgotten. Hovering high
over the town, the frightening wyvern, whirr of her winging interwoven with fire.

Poetry in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

      Twice a year a new issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics is published online; here is a link to the Table of Contests for the July, 2025 issue which I have recently enjoyed browsing.   This issue contains a plentiful variety of poems and articles related to poetry.  The term "Linear Poem" was a concept new to me -- found here in the article, "Introducing the Linear Poem" by Cristian Ramirez Rodriguez -- and I offer it below:

     Linear Poems
     Are poems where each line
     increases or deceases by the same number of 
     words every single line, this number is the slope, m, and
     the words in title are b (intercept); Here m is 3, b is 2.

The author goes on to tell how he has used this form with math students -- and he offers additional examples.

Rhymes Help Us Remember

     In a few days I will be going on a vacation with family -- enjoying time with my children and grandchildren.  As I think back to past times together, I remember querying my grandkids about their math interests and suggesting the invention of a mathy rhyme.  I find rhyming statements easier to remember than non-rhyming ones -- and my grandchildren enjoyed discovering and inventing and repeating rhymes -- sometimes brilliant and sometimes silly.

     One of my longest-known and all-time favorite mathy rhymes is this one that tells the days of the month; below is a version of this memory-aid, found online here at Math is Fun.  

Mathematics and Golf

      Poet and science-writer Sam Illingworth has been noted in earlier posts in this blog -- here's a link -- and I enjoy online-searching for his work again and again to find still more.   Illingworth's blog, The Poetry of Science, is a wonderful site to visit and revisit, to read and explore.  

    Recently I discovered the following Illingworth poem  (posted at The Poetry of Science on June 19, 2025) -- a poem with a bit of math AND inspired by recent research findings that living near a golf course increases the risk of Parkinson's disease (possibly due to exposure to pesticides used on the course).

          Overspill      by Sam Illingworth

               They do not play,
               but live beside
               the tailored grass.

2015 Documentary Film -- Calculating Ada

     One of the mathematicians that I celebrate for her achievements is Ada Lovelace  (1815 - 1832).  Despite her short life (with death due to uterine cancer) Lovelace did important work on the development of computers (in her time called analytical engines).   

     Here is a link to a fascinating documentary, "Calculating Ada:  The Countess of Computing -- 2015,"  about the life of Ada. Thinking about Ada and exploring mathy poems led me to the collection Against Infinity (on my bookshelf) and to the following poem:

          Zero     by Harriet Zinnes (1919-2019)

Learning by Writing . . . and Revising . . .

      On X (Twitter) today I found the following quote posted by poet Ilya Kaminsky -- quoting recently deceased poet Fanny Howe (1940-2025).  Howe's poetic statement, quoted below, is one that applies (for me, at least) to both poetry and mathematics:

One way to understand your own condition is to write something and spend a long time revising it.

In revising you teach yourself.  You find your own information buried in your body.  It is still alive until you are not.

Here, at PoetryFoundation.com, are more than twenty of Howe's poems; I offer one of these below:

Mathematics linked to Water

      I was captivated by the title -- "He's Not a Poet, But He Plays One" -- of a poem (found here) by Donald Illich -- and it led me to want to explore this poet's writing.  Sometimes he uses mathematics -- not in major thematic ways but in very interesting ways.  Below I offer a poem that illustrates my view.

       Water Mathematics       by Donald Illich

             During the ocean we timed our lake,
             calculated the river and the stream,

             modeled the pond under dangerous 
             situations.  Water was really math,

Teaching Math with Poetry -- Some Activities

      The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) offers delightful and broad-ranging connections between mathematics and the arts.  An article that I discovered recently considers ways to use poetry in mathematics classes.  Found in the July 2023 issue, "Teaching Mathematics with Poetry: Some Activities,"  by Alexis E. Langellier (an adjunct professor of Computer Science at Moraine Valley Community College and a graduate teaching assistant at graduate student in Mathematical Sciences at Northern Illinois University).  Working toward a degree in Computer Science, Langellier has this intent:  My goal is to get more women in STEM.

Counting syllables . . .

Musing this morning, this blogger found these words:

 My
hands
hold a pen
and my fingers
translate thoughts into
words on paper.  Sometimes
I meet someone who
thinks with fingers
like I do.

from UPSTART -- A Magazine of Art + Culture + Life

THANK YOU, Greg Coxson,
for frequent sharing of MATHY POEMS with me!

      Gregory Coxson, professor and researcher in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the US Naval Academy, is a supporter of integration of the arts with the sciences and enjoys writing poems.  (Here is a link to his previous appearances in this blog -- including a couple of poems that he created.)  

    Greg has sent me some sample poems from the Summer, 2025 issue of  Up.St.ART, a magazine that focuses on and celebrates the arts in the Annapolis, MD region.  The issue that Coxson alerted me to has a special collection of Harvested Words -- poems built by selecting phrases from another publication.  From this collection I share a poem, shown below, that is built from phrases selected from the book Probable Impossibilities by Alan Lightman; the selector is poet Natalie Canavor of Annapolis, MD, and she has given me permission to include her poem here:    

     Glimmerings      by Natalie Canavor

Honoring Peter Cameron

THANK YOU, Peter Cameron,

for your generous sharing of mathematical ideas and their links!

      Happening soon -- the Conference on Theoretical and Computational Algebra -- scheduled to take place in Evora, Portugal, June 29 - July 3, 2025.  (Conference information is available at this link.)   A special feature of this conference will be the honoring of mathematician Peter Cameron.  As mathematicians and poetry-lovers and bloggers, Peter and I discovered each other online.  This  link leads to Cameron's first "Mathematics and poetry" blog posting (on April 6, 2010) and in Cameron's posting on July 14, 2010 (entitled "Mathematics and Poetry, 2") he links to my blog (first posting March 23, 2010) with this statement:

JoAnne Growney has posted on her blog a poem structured using prime factorisations: I think it is a lovely poem, and urge you to take a look.

This link leads to a summary-description of Cameron's blog and this link goes to his first "Mathematics and poetry" posting.   AND, here is a link to the search-results for the term "poetry" in his blog.

     I would like to celebrate Peter Cameron by sharing the opening stanzas of his ten-stanza mathy poem, "Millennium":  

Opening the Mind . . .

Recently I found   (on X  @letsplaymath)   this thoughtful and poetic musing by Denise Gaskins :

         Mathematical beauty 
              is when our mind's eye is opened
                   to see  something new -- or
                        to see something old in a new light.

The Art of Numbers

    A good friend who is a strong and active supporter of math-poetry links is Annapolis Naval Academy Professor Greg Coxson -- and, in a recent article (in this newsletter from a subgroup of the Mathematical Association of America -- MAA) entitled  "Meet Me on the Bridge Between Mathematics and Poetry," Coxson offers several poems.  One of these is "The Art of Numbers"  by Scotland mathematician-poet Eveline Pye -- and she has given me permission to offer it in my blog:

       The Art of Numbers     by Eveline Pye

            We talk of beautiful words, art, buildings
            when they're not part of the natural world.
            An x in Algebra is no more abstract than
            an idea in philosophy,  just more useful.    

Mathematics of Family -- in a Poem

     Split This Rock is an activist poetry organization that calls poets to a greater role in public life and reaches out to a network of socially engaged poets; the organization is  centered in Washington, DC but reaches all over the world . . .   One of their ongoing activities is the selection of a Poem of the Week -- and one of their recent choices was a challenging and fascinating poem that included frequent uses of mathematical notation to express its ideas.

Digital Art Exhibition Seeks Math Poetry

Submission Deadline -- September 24, 2025

Space Byi *2025 is an experimental digital art platform dedicated to exploring the intersection of mathematics, geometry, and artistic expression. As an official pavilion of The Wrong Biennale, they provide "a space for artists, mathematicians, and creative thinkers to engage in boundary-pushing visual and conceptual explorations."

In particular, this site extends a call for mathematical poetry -- information at this link -- to be submitted via email on or before September 24, 2025  --  to Radoslav Rochallyi at info@rochallyi.com.

An AMS Presentation by Sarah Hart

      One of the strong and consistent promoters of connections between mathematics and the arts is Sarah Hart and she recently gave the 2025 Einstein Public Lecture at Clemson University (sponsored by AMS, the American Mathematical Society) entitled "A Mathematical Journey Through Literature."  

     Hart is the author of Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature (Flatiron Books, 2023) -- NYTimes review here;  purchase info here.  Her presentation, summarized here in an AMS article entitled "The Axiom of a Sonnet," explored ways that the guidelines for a sonnet -- or other poetic structure -- are similar to the guidelines for a mathematical structure such as a group or a ring.  A thought-provoking quote from her presentation:

Student-Run Math Poetry Magazine

     Several weeks ago I was surprised and delighted to receive an email from Lillian Liu, a high school student in Westchester, New York and also is a mentee of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) -- with mentor Dr. Annalisa Crannell, emerita professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania and someone I have been privileged to know.

     High school junior Lillian Liu has recently founded The Hyperbolic Review --  her response to noticing that "mathematical poetry isn’t as widely discussed or recognized as it should be. It seemed that many people weren’t even aware of its existence." Because this blog shows my connection with mathy poetry, Liu reached out to me, via email, and sent me this link to Issue 1 of The Hyperbolic Review: https://www.thehyperbolicreview.com/issue-1.

Below I offer the opening stanzas of "Asymptotes" by Devanshee Soni; following this sample will be a link to The Hyperbolic Review -- containing the complete poem and lots of others.

2025 BRIDGES--mid-July in Eindhoven, Netherlands

      Once again, my mathematician-poet-friend Sarah Glaz has carefully organized a math-poetry reading -- this one to be held at the upcoming Bridges Math-Arts Conference, July 14-18, 2025 in Eindhoven, Netherlands.  Details concerning the exact time and location for the reading, scheduled for Thursday, July 17, will be announced here at this link.

     Below I offer a sampling from the poets who will be reading at Eindhoven -- a CENTO that I have built by inclusion of a phrase from a poem by each of the poets registered for participation in Bridges 2025.  (Information about the poets is found here at this website maintained by Sarah Glaz.)

WE CELEBRATE MATHEMATICS

        The power of a theorem lies 
        with a diagram of clockwise arrows 
        hovering high over the town,                        
        while infinite time is waiting
        and triple sixes strive
        in-between our beginnings and ends.    

Math Class

      One of my very-special math-poetry connections -- and a frequent sharer of new poems with me -- is Gregory Coxson, Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the US Naval Academy  in Annapolis, Maryland.  Recently he sent me the poem "Math Class" by Poet Mary Crow -- a poem that deals with the role of women in math.  I offer its opening lines below, followed by a link to the complete poem.  (A good poem to stimulate class discussion of the currently-growing status of women in math.)

     Math Class     by Mary Crow

          Somehow that shriveled arm
          seemed the perfect arm
          for tracing the odd shapes of geometry
          in white on our black chalkboard
          showing us a woman could do
          this unwomanly thing
          and sometimes a girl would let out a giggle
          almost like a pig squeak
          and our teacher would stop, chalk
          in her lifted hand
          and her back would stiffen
          as she turned and glared at us
          then returned
          to tracing out her mysteries
          we girls thought
          meant math is for old maids  .  .  .

               Crow's complete poem is available online here at poets.org.  

Power Grows with Numbers

     A worthy organization in Washington, DC in which to get involved is FREE MINDS BOOK CLUB (https://freemindsbookclub.org/about-us/) -- an organization that collects books and provides reading opportunities for incarcerated individuals AND ALSO offers online presentations of poems (https://freemindsbookclub.org/poems/) for volunteers to read and offer comments.  I encourage you to participate -- participants need not be poets, simply interested readers!

     Here are the opening lines of one of the poems I found at the Free Minds website; please visit the site to sign in and read more:

Math Poems for Students

      Here at the website We Are Teachers I found a delightful collection of 38 Math Poems for Students in All Grade Levels.  Although I liked the offering there of "Eighteen Flavors" by Shel Silverstein I found the sample there to be incomplete (only ten flavors) and I searched further to find Silverstein's complete poem (found here) and, ice-cream lover that I am, I offer it below:

Remembering Pennsylvania Poet Harry Humes

     A Pennsylvania poet whose work I enjoyed and learned from has recently passed away --  Harry Humes, who taught literature and film at Kutztown (PA) University and produced and edited  (until his retirement in 1999) a bi-annual poetry journal, Yarrow.

     Humes' poetry was not mathy  but I connected with it deeply because we had Pennsylvania in common,  Back in 2010, in the early days of this blog, I posted Humes' poem "The Butterfly Effect" at this link.  Here is a screenshot of the poem's opening lines:   

What America Looks Like -- a poetry-photo

     Recent Presidential misstatements and distortions of American politics and policies are disturbing -- and I have pulled from my shelf a literary anthology This Is What America Looks Like. published in 2021 by the Washington Writers Publishing House and containing fiction and poetry from writers in DC, Maryland, and Virginia.  (Purchase is available at amazon.com.)  In this collection I found, in the poem "D.C." by Donald Illich, the phrase "here, where presidents lied" -- and since the poem contains a couple of quantitative words, I offer it below:

     D.C.     by Donald Illich  

             I'd never seen rats
             crawl down city streets
             until I came here,
             where presidents lied,  

Earth Day -- Conserve!

      Today I look back to this "Fib" posted last year and to other previous Earth Day postings.  -- as I HOPE that we can learn to save our planet!

Steam Poetry Video Contest -- deadline 4/30

      A brief reminder that the STEAM POWERED POETRY VIDEO CONTEST -- announced in this this posting from last November -- has its entry deadline approaching very soon -- on Wednesday, April 30.  And here is a direct link to contest information.

Write a poem . . .Create a video of you reading it . . . SUBMIT! 

AMS Contest-winning Student Mathy Poems

      It delights me that the American Mathematical society links math and poetry by sponsoring a student poetry contest each year.   AMS recently announced this year's winners (along with videos of the winning poems) -- and I offer samples of the winning poems (from college, high school, and middle school students) below:

     from "Proof"  by Emilynne Newsom, Harvey Mudd College

          There's a practice you will see in math.
          It is a way of showing what is true.
          In steady step-by-step it lays a path
          from what you know to what you seek to prove.    (Find the rest here.)

     from "Homeric Simile ... "  by Samanyu Ganesh, The Westminster Schools

          Just as the sea otters grasp each others' paws
          whilst sleeping, latently
          basking in the stillness of their moonlit sanctuary, drifting
          assuredly      . . .       (Find the rest of this poem here.)     

    from "forever"    by Nora McKinstry, Edmond Heights, K-12     

          a mobius strip is a never ending loop a
          forever-going cycle of one small strip
          but still it goes on and on
          impossible to stop but easily created . . .        (Find the rest here.)  

Math Women -- and one of them writes Poetry

     One of my recent delights was to be contacted by mathematician Lakshmi Chandrasekaran, a mathematician that is one of the team at Her Maths Story -- a website (found at https://hermathsstory.eu/ ) that publicizes and celebrates the stories of female mathematicians.  A bit of background about the website is shown in the screen-shot below:

Exploring Math-Attitudes with Verse

     Exploring the internet, looking for mathy poems, I came across the website Poemverse -- and I entered the search term math and was led to an exciting list of possibilities -- and plentiful outcomes also occurred when I searched using other mathy terms -- algebra, geometry, etc...   I  also found a collection of "Poetry for the Math Haters" -- at this link.  Below I offer two verses found there -- alas, without information about the contributing poets. 

     Finding Humor in Math Hating

          Mathematical Mischief       by Jessica Rose

               Oh, math, your tricks and riddles,
               Leave my brain tangled and in a fiddle,
               But in this battle of numbers and wit,
               I'll find humor, and never submit.

          Mathematical Laughter      by David Scott

               Math, my eternal nemesis, it seems,
               Yet I'll laugh at your complex schemes,
               For in this world of calculations and strife,
               A little humor is the elixir of life.

AND, here is a link to some YouTube math songs!

In April, Celebrate BOTH Mathematics and Poetry

           In the United States, April is both National Poetry Month and Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month.  Visits to the links in the preceding sentence will offer lots of information about these monthly celebrations (as will exploring this blog).  AND, below I offer a poetic celebration of mathematics.

     American poet Harry Mathews (1950-2017) was a member of OULIPO and divided his time between New York and Paris; much of his work moved outside the restrictions of traditional poetic forms.

     Here are the opening lines of his poem,  "Safety in Numbers":

from    Safety in Numbers     by Harry Mathews

     The enthusiasm with which I repeatedly declare you my one
     And only confirms the fact that we are indeed two,
     Not one; nor can anything we do ever let us feel three
     (And this is no lisp-like alteration: it's four
     That's a crowd, not a trinity), and our five
     Fingers and toes multiplied leave us at six-

Zero -- Celebrate this Powerful Tool

       As time passes I find -- to my delight -- more and more mathy poems available via internet.  Recently I was alerted to a fascinating poem appearing recently in The Mathematical Intelligencer  (Vol 47, p. 39, 2025).--  "I am the Zero" by Md Sadikur Rahman.  Here is one of its stanzas (and the complete poem is available at this link):

from    I Am the Zero     by Md Sadikur Rahman

          I am the mirror in the middle of the number line,

          Where numbers see their reflections with the proper sign.

          Add me to a number, and there is no change.

          But multiply by me, I kill that one, leafing nothing in exchange.

          Dividing by me?  That's a troublesome thing,

          Even the brightest minds must pause and think.

     Rahman's complete poem is available at this link.

Women's History Month -- Celebrate MATH-WOMEN

      A book that I return to again and again for mathy poems is Manifold:  Poetry of Mathematics by E. R. Lutken (Taos Press, 2021).  Lutken therein celebrates a mathematician that I greatly admire, Amalie Emmy Noether (1882-1935).  

     Here are several powerful lines from Lutken's poem "Emmy Noether and the Conservation of Hope":

. . . .                    Her awe of abstract algebra endured.

     Against winds feeling hatred,
     purge of Jews from academics.
     she wrote, thought, taught from home.
     Flames reaching the streets
     forced a journey of tears,
     exile to America/

                         She searched the heart of mathematics
                                    and physics from wherever.

Lutken's complete poem is available at this link;  for and previous postings in this blog of work by E. R. (Emily) Lutken, follow this link.  A varied collection of postings featuring Emmy Noether may be found at this link.

AND, to further celebrate women in math and poetry, explore the labels in the right-hand column of this blog AND use the SEARCH box.

A Child's Garden of Verses -- Geometry of a City

Celebrating WORLD POETRY DAY -- with a memory!

     As a child I became acquainted with poetry -- poetry that I came to love -- through a copy of A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), an undated edition by Avenel Books that was on our farmhouse bookshelf when I was growing up.

       Block City    by Robert Louis Stevenson  (1850–1894)

            What are you able to build with your blocks?
            Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
            Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
            But I can be happy and building at home.   

A Triangular Poem

     Non-poets often wonder about the use of patterns in poems -- does following a set of constraints help of hinder the process?  For me, often -- though not always -- constraints push me to discovery.  Below I offer a triangular poem by Washington, DC poet E. Laura Golberg which I re-found recently in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM);   Golberg's poem remembers the costs of war.

    Pension Building, Washington, DC     by E. Laura Golberg 

          A
          dis-
          play
          of the
          normal
          curve can
          be found in
          old buildings
          where feet have
          rubbed away the
          middle of stair steps.
          Here, wounded Union
          veterans pulling one foot
          over the new marble, wore
          off atoms.  Men with crutches
          placed them firmly at an angle.
          Their boots scuffed the stairs.
          Those who had been refused
          pensions descended, while
          dragging feet.  Today, the
          building, with its pillars
          and open space is used
          as a museum.  Balls
          may be held here;
          hems of formal
          gowns weep
          down the
          stairs.

Golberg's mathy poems  "Menger Sponge"  and "Heuristic or Stochastic?" also are available online (also published by JHM).

Celebrate PI AND Remember its digits

     Friday, March 14 (3.14) will be π-day -- and I look back and remember how one of my high school math teachers challenged me and my classmates to come to class prepared to recite as many digits of π as we could remember,  I was not a particularly good memorizer and was delighted  to learn that the lengths of the words in this sentence:

How I wish I could calculate pi !

are the first seven digits of pi . . . . and the lengths of the words in the following rhyme give the first thirteen digits:

                      See, I have a rhyme assisting
                      my feeble brain,
                      its tasks sometime resisting.

More here (in a blog posting from way back in 2010)

AND

This link leads to a webpage offering a million digits of π.

Poetry Moment with a Bit of Math

       Recently on the weekly program Poetry Moment on WPSU -- a radio station in Central Pennsylvania -- poet Marjorie Maddox featured work by another Pennsylvania poet and Emeritus Professor at Penn State University, Emily Grosholz.

     Grosholz' featured poem, "Holding Patterns," is a villanelle:  Here are its opening lines:

          We can’t remember half of what we know.
          They hug each other and then turn away.
          One thinks in silence, never let me go.

          The sky above the airport glints with snow
          That melts beneath the laws it must obey.
          We can’t remember half of what we know.

Geometry of Kindness . . . Power of a Circle

      Found on Facebook recently -- this snapshot of my syllable-count triangle from an earlier blog posting  . . . I like the way that choosing words that conform to a pattern stimulates my thoughts.

From a blog posting back in 2018

Black History Month Celebrates Math Women

     Black mathematicians and female mathematicians often have not been given the credit they deserve -- and I have been delighted to find this website that features eleven famous African-American mathematicians --  six of which are women.   This website celebrates: 

2.) Fern Hunt (1948-   )     Fern Hunt is best known for her work in applied mathematics and mathematical biology. Throughout her great career, she has been involved with biomathematics, patterns in genetic variation, and chaos theory.   She currently works as an educator and presenter with the aim of encouraging women and minority students to pursue graduate degrees in mathematics and other STEM fields. 

5.) Katherine Johnson (1918-2020)  Katherine Johnson was the main character of the critically acclaimed film "Hidden Figures." Her contributions in the field of orbital mechanics, alongside fellow female African American mathematicians Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, were critical to the United States’ success in putting astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 1962.  She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015.

Halfway Up . . . Halfway Down

     Recently I came across the following poem -- posted by the source English Literature on Facebook --  and it reminded me with delight of the good times I have had reading aloud to my children and grandchildren and, since the poem is a bit mathy, I share it below with you!

     Halfway Down     by A. A Milne

          Halfway down the stairs
          is a stair
          where i sit.
          there isn't any
          other stair
          quite like
          it.
          i'm not at the bottom,
          i'm not at the top; 
          so this is the stair
          where
          I always
          stop.

Counting and Rhyming

     Several days ago my email contained a surprise message -- containing a mathy poem --  from Ramandeep Johal, a theoretical physicist at IISER Mohali (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) in northern India.  I offer Johal's poem below -- a poem from his 2016 collection, The Sea of Tranquility 

     From One to Ten     by Ramandeep Johal

          Some things you find in pairs
          some exist just alone.
          While a trinity needs
          some degree of unity,
          a group of four
          requires bit more.

Imaginary Numbers

     Current politics has made me take more notice of several politicians' imaginary numbers -- far from fact and human needs.  And, after a while -- to relax -- my mind moved on to the imaginary numbers of mathematics, and I found (at the PoetrySoup website) this poem which I'd like to share.

Imaginary Numbers       by Robert Pettit

Anybody can consider this statement as moot:
Negative real numbers cannot have a square root.
When working with real numbers with values less than zero,
the squared product will be positive; so where do you go?
In a parabola, all points except zero lie above the x-axis.
Many students get confused because of this.
This placed mathematicians in a bit of a quandary.
That was until numbers were invented that are imaginary.

I did not find online biographical information about poet Pettit but I did find this link to his many many poems available at PoetrySoup -- a list going back all the way to 2010.  AND here is a link to his 2010 limerick, "Seventeen."

This link leads to previous mentions of imaginary numbers in this blog.  

Math-Poetry Blog -- An Invitation to Explore

      Yesterday I made a blog posting with the same title as this one -- and this morning I discovered that my posting was full of links that were not working as I had expected.  And so, I have deleted the post.  I do, indeed, invite you to explore the blog -- lots of labels in the lower right-hand column can help you find specific posts.  And another posting with come soon . . .

Collections of Mathy Poetry

    My friend and colleague, Marian Christie, has let me know that the math-poetry collection (with commentary) that she published in 2021 -- From Fibs to Fractals: Exploring Mathematical Forms in Poetry -- is now available for free download on her website. Here is the link for downloading.   AND, this link leads to samples of Christie's own mathy poems. published earlier in her blog.

      Today I have been browsing From Fibs to Fractals.  In an entertaining and informative chat in Christie's opening chapter about the Fibonacci numbers, I encountered this sample, a six-line syllable-count Fib poem by contemporary American poet B. A. France:

       Looking     by B. A. France

               moon
               light
               rising
               above the
               skeletal treetops
               she wonders what tomorrow brings   

Poet and Math Teacher Passes On

     Poet Jonathan Holden (1941-2024) -- who, early in his career, was a math teacher -- died just a few weeks ago.  Seeing his death notice has reminded me to revisit and again enjoy and appreciate his work.  My first mention of Holden's work in this blog was in this posting in January, 2011 -- and here is a link to the list of postings in which his poetry is featured.  

     Two of Holden's mathy poems are included in the anthology that was gathered by mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz and me -- Strange Attractors,  Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters/ CRC Press, 2008).  One of these is "The Departure of an Alphabet,"  a poem that deals with age-related decline of memory and reasoning.  I offer its opening lines:

from   The Departure of an Alphabet     by Jonathan Holden