Recently I have found a rich source of mathy poems to explore -- at the website poemverse.org. For example, there are Poems about Math Class and The Beauty of Geometry: Exploring Angles through Poetry and The Beauty of Haiku Poems about Math . . . . and . . . lots more . . .
Here are two samples, with a link to more:
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| More mathy Haiku may be found here at poemverse.org. |
One of the most active and effective ambassadors for connections between mathematics and the arts is Gizem Karaali. Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at California's Pomona College. Poet and writer as well as teacher and researcher, Karaali is a founding editor of Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, a peer-reviewed open-access journal that publishes articles, essays, fiction and poetry with a rich variety of connections to mathematics.
Recently I rediscovered online one of Karaali's poems, a villanelle published almost ten years ago in the Mathematical Association of America's undergraduate magazine, Math Horizons (February, 2015, Volume 22, Issue 3).
A MATHEMATICIAN'S VILLANELLE by Gizem Karaali
When first did I learn to cherish the bittersweet taste of mathematics?
Mental torture, subtle joy, doubt and wonder, me in meaning
Must have come later, after the games, the limericks, the lyrics.
Strange ceremonies awaited me, mystical hymns, magic tricks,
After the first gulp of water, the first bite, the first bloodletting.
When first did I learn to cherish the bittersweet taste of mathematics?
Mike Ferguson (America-born but long-time Brit) is a retired teacher of English and creative writing AND a poet. I offer one of his poems below (a poem developed from a list and found here in Ferguson's blog, gravyfromthegazebo). Not only is Ferguson's poem mathy and thought-provoking, but it also can be a useful example to use with students. One of the effective strategies to use to discover and gather thoughts on a particular topic is to create a list. The activity of writing the list often leads to additional creative thinking and -- if a poem is a goal -- the list can become poetic. If you've never done so, try it!
Established in honor of math-popularizer Martin Gardner (1914-2010), Celebration of the Mind Day occurs on October 21 each year. Lots of interesting information about Gardner and the celebration-day may be found at this link. This link leads to previous postings in this blog that feature Gardner and his work. Not a poet, Gardner called himself "an occasional versifier" and here is an example:
π goes on and on
And e is just as cursed
I wonder, how does π begin
When its digits are reversed?
For an array of mathy connections that celebrate the mind and stretch it, explore the links offered above!
Recently I have found a website maintained by Jenna Laib, a K-8 math specialist in the Boston area -- and at her website there I have found a posting of a Halloween poem with accompanying prose that considers the value of using numbers to tell stories. The poem is below -- and, along with it, the website offers many more.
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| More about Raffi and Ken Whitely available at this link. |
Mathematician Ursula Whitcher is an Associate Editor for the American Mathematical Society's Mathematical Reviews and a poet -- someone whom I first met at a conference, "Creative Writing in Mathematics," at the Banff International Research Station in 2016. conferences. She is a versatile writer -- with a long list of publications available here at her website.
Here is Whitcher's mathematically-structured poem, "Tuesday," first published in 2019 in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, at this link.
Tuesday by Ursula Whitcher
Sometimes it is not possible to mend
what’s broken, either if you meant
to prove something impossible, or else
to save someone. Your best friend has
not eaten for six days. Your father loses things.
Your brother lies.
It’s Tuesday, so the week’s no longer new, and yet
nowhere near done.
All you can do is move
and keep on moving, trust
time changes shattered things
and lies once known are maps.
Author’s Note. This poem’s form is taken from the structure of the field with seven elements: the meter, in iambs, follows a pattern based on 5, 4, 6, 2, 3, the nontrivial values taken by powers of 5 (mod 7) as it generates the group of units of the field.
Previous mentions of Ursula Whitcher in this blog are listed at this link.
The second Tuesday in October has been selected as Ada Lovelace Day -- a time for celebrating that pioneering woman and all women in STEM.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, better known as Ada Lovelace (December 10, 1815–November 27, 1852) -- and daughter of the poet Lord Byron -- is celebrated as the world’s first computer programmer, the first person to combine the mathematical capabilities of computational machines with the poetic possibilities of symbolic logic (applied with clever imagination). (Many more biographical details may be found at this link.) And here is a link to an interesting article by Johns Hopkins voice Meghana Ravi entitled "Ada Lovelace found poetry in computer algorithms."
Something to think about . . . do some of us still cling? . . . obediently and thoughtlessly . . . to beliefs such as
I can't / poets can't understand mathematics
or
I can't / math people can't understand poetry
Current interactive teaching/learning processes are helping to revise those negative attitudes -- and my thoughts on the subject were brought to mind by a poem that showed up recently in my email. It is Poem 15 in the Poetry 180 project, an activity initiated in 2002 by Poet Laureate Billy Collins in 2002 -- a project that provides a poem for students for each day of the traditional school year. (Each Sunday subscribers get an email that provides a link to a poem for each day of the coming week.)
Poetry's special effects often come from the multiple meanings of terms used -- and today I offer a snip of a mathy item that I enjoyed and that plays with meaning -- an item I found a few days ago (September 19) on X (Twitter),
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| A posting by California math teacher Howie Hua |
During the past weekend, long-time friends in Pennsylvania have reminded me that this is the week of The Bloomsburg Fair -- an annual event held in Bloomsburg, PA (where I lived with my family and taught mathematics at Bloomsburg University for a bunch of years). Public schools in Bloomsburg started their fall classes a week early so that students could have vacation-time during Fair Week -- held near the end of September. The fair brings farmers and gardeners and cooks and other creative country folk together to show their products and it was easy for me to get involved since I lived just a few blocks from the Bloomsburg Fairground. Moreover, Pennsylvania county fairs were familiar to me from my childhood. I grew up on a farm near Indiana, PA -- home of the Indiana County Fair, in which my father participated by exhibiting crops and animals and which I attended to enjoy Ferris-wheel rides and other carnival entertainments.
One of my celebrations of this fondly-remembered Bloomsburg event was to write a poem entitled "The Bloomsburg Fair," a poem with bits of math. Here is one of its stanzas.
Today's featured poet, Britt Kaufmann, is not only a writer but also a graphic designer, a playwright, and "a lifelong reader and learner." And a math tutor! Out this month (from Press 53) is her mathy collection, Midlife Calculus -- a thoughtful and fun-to-read collection that links math ideas to a variety of life's experiences.
Last February, I was introduced to Kaufmann's work when her book-title-poem, "Midlife Calculus," appeared in Scientific American. I was delighted to also find her poem, "Z-score of Zero" here in the April-May edition of MAA Focus and I was drawn to include it in this April, 2024 blog-posting. Visit and enjoy!
Midlife Calculus is available here. And below are a couple of samples:
Growing up on a Pennsylvania farm gave me lots of opportunities to use mathematics -- counting sheep, choosing patterns for planting, and many kitchen tasks. I also enjoyed occasional times to join friends at in-town playgrounds and, on their paved areas, hopscotch was one of our arithmetical and geometrical activities. Recently I came across a wonderful online collection of poems by Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014) -- and, within it, this slightly mathy poem that includes hopscotch and also speaks of racial injustice:
Harlem Hopscotch by Maya Angelou
One foot down, then hop! It's hot.
Good things for the ones that's got.
Another jump, now to the left.
Everybody for hisself.
Among my favorite emails are those that come from Innisfree, an online journal (at this link) edited by poet Greg McBride, with new issues emerging each six months. A wonderful discovery in the most recent issue is the mathy poem "Lagniappe" by Michigan poet Lynn Domina.
Domina's poem relates to some of my delightful childhood experiences: I often was asked to help a great aunt with her shopping and, for both of us, one of our favorite stops was a family-owned bakery which supplied an extra pastry to any dozen purchased -- in case one of the dozen was a bit small or otherwise inferior -- and my aunt always rewarded me with the extra. Today, no pastries -- but a great poem; read on:
EXPLORE MATHEMATICS BY TALKING ABOUT IT!
math talk: mathematical ideas in poems for two voices is the title of a 1991 poetry collection (Wide World Publishing, available here) by theoni pappas, a long-time teacher of mathematics and author of many books that help to popularize mathematics. Here are the opening lines of her poem-for-two-voices, "Zero," -- found on page 23 of her math-talk collection.
In its collection of Math Voices the American Mathematical Society (AMS) has a very interesting Feature Column -- a column written for students, teachers, and the general public -- that offers essays about math that it describes as "useful, fun, inspiring, or startling." When browsing the column recently I found and enjoyed a column by Sara Stoudt of Bucknell University entitled "Sampled Poems Contain Multitudes" -- an article that gives readers an opportunity to experience Walt Whitman's poem, "Song of Myself" (a book-length poem with a total of 52 poem-sections, found here at the Poetry Foundation website) via a poem with a sample line for each section, Here are the opening lines:
From Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself":
Angela Tabiri, a young mathematician from Ghana, in July captured global attention by winning the title, World’s Most Interesting Mathematician. Here is her story! This accolade was bestowed upon her by The Big Internet Math-Off, a competition held in the US last July. Here is a link to the finals in the competition in which Angela's winning entry is included.
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| Go here for Angela Tabiri's math story. |
Daniel May -- professor at Black Hills State University in South Dakota -- enjoys not only teaching mathematics to future teachers but also exploration of the combinatorics of card games and the poetry of mathematical patterns and ideas. He spends his summers working with Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM), a mathematics enrichment program for under-served public middle school students in New York City and Los Angeles.
Below I offer a poem by May that was part of the program at the recent BRIDGES Conference. (May's poem also is found with lots of BRIDGES poetry and poet-information here at the website of Sarah Glaz.)
Eight Minutes by Daniel May
Eyelids closed,
warm
sunlight shining
bright
onto my thin skin.
Earth below me, lush and vibrant from
our star's
nearly infinite rays.
One of the good things that is happening is that poets and math people -- and others -- are investing time and funds in projects to help incarcerated individuals find crime-free activities for their present and future lives. Here is a link to information about a Prison Math Project and this link leads to information about Prison Poetry Workshops. A wonderful variety of activities have been taking place!
Below I offer the opening lines of a poem that counts prisoners and tells of the racial and other injustices that they suffer-- a poem by prisoner, Korean war veteran, and poet Ethridge Knight (1931-1991). (Knight's complete poem may be found here -- along with many more -- at the Poetry Foundation website.)
A Fable by Etheridge Knight
Once upon a today and yesterday and nevermore there were 7 men and women all locked / up in prison cells. Now these 7 men and women were innocent of any crimes; they were in prison because their skins were black. Day after day, the prisoners paced their cells, pining for their freedom. And the non-black jailers would laugh at the prisoners and beat them with sticks and throw their food on the floor. Finally, prisoner #1 said, “I will educate myself and emulate the non-colored people. That is the way to freedom—c’mon, you guys, and follow me.” “Hell, no,” said prisoner #2. “The only way to get free is . . .
Knight's complete poem is available here.
Previous blog postings telling of math-poetry opportunities for incarcerated persons may be found here at this link.
One of my favorite mathy publications is the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, an online peer-reviewed journal published twice yearly by the Claremont Colleges Library and edited by Mark Huber, Claremont McKenna College, and Gizem Karaali, Pomona College. The most recent issue -- (Vol. 14, issue 2), available online here. The screen-shot below shows the poetry-contents of this issue.
In childhood -- and later also -- rhymes help us to remember. I recall reciting, in early years. "Pme, two, buckle my shoe; three, four, shut the door . . ." Here -- at the website, Empowered Parents -- are a number of counting songs and rhymes.
Recently I found among the poems of one of my favorite poets -- Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967) -- a delightful counting poem entitled "Brass Spittoons." Here are some of its lines:
As I age and find myself slowing down in my math-poetry ventures it is a delight to see other mathy writers surging with energy and thoughtful publications.
One frequent source of math-arts connections is Sarah Hart, Professor Emerita of Mathematics, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Birbeck University, London. Here is a link to an article by Hart containing material excerpted from her collection Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature (Flatiron Books: New York, 2023).
Once Upon a Prime is a prose explanation completed with frequent literary examples. Here is a poem that her daughter, Emma, wrote "for Mummy's book."
A film project worthy of support (and found at this website) is JOURNEYS OF BLACK MATHEMATICIANS: A documentary project by writer and film-maker George Csicery. Severely underrepresented in mathematics, African Americans have played important roles as researchers and educators in the field. This documentary traces the history of the individuals who worked as pioneers in expanding the presence of African Americans in mathematics.
Go to this link (the same one as sbove) and scroll down for access to the films in Csicery's collection; featured mathematicians include: Evelyn Boyd Granville, Robert Edward Bozeman, Edray Goins, Johnny L. Houston, Monica Stephens Cooley, Ulrica Wilson, Omayra R. Orgega, Virginia K. Newell, Scott Williams, Duane Cooper, Talitha M. Washington . . .
I close with the opening lines of a song, written by Mitchell Moffit and found at this link, that can be helpful in memorizing many digits of pi -- an amazing endeavor that some people undertake.
Often I explore and enrich my thinking by organizing information with a tree diagram. The following poem by Padma Venkatraman (found here in the March 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine) is not mathematical in content BUT it uses a diagram of a tree to discover and organize thoughts. Enjoy!
Whenever You See a Tree by Padma Venkatraman
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| This poem by Padma Venkatraman appeared in the March 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine. |
As she had done in numerous preceding years, mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz is once again an organizer for a poetry reading at the BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference -- this year to be held in Richmond, Virginia, August 1-5.
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| Bridges Poetry Reading Website |
Poetry Reading Sunday, August 4, 3:00 - 5:00 pm2500 West Broad Street Richmond, Virginia
I have signed up for a Google email service, "Google Alert" which sends to my g-mail address links to items found in Google searching that contain the words "poetry" and "mathematics". Recently such an email alerted me to a sharing by a psychiatrist who writes poetry about his medical experiences.
Richard Berlin, MD, has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 26 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences. At this link, he shared the poem "Black Momma Math", by Kimberly Jae who is an award-winning poet, ranked among the top 30 slam poets in the world in 2018. The poem is also available here at the Poetry Foundation website. I offer its opening stanzas below.
A couple of weeks ago (on June 19) I learned on X (formerly Twitter) that 401 years ago, mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was born -- more info here. Probably Pascal is best known for the array of numbers called Pascal's triangle -- and that array has influenced poetry as well as mathematics.
My source of this info about Pascal was an ongoing collection of postings on X by Mathematics & Statistics St Andrews, @StA_Maths_Stats, which offers lots of historical facts about math and math people. Their June 19 posting offered this:
A recent return to one of my favorite poetry collections -- alas, now out of print -- Against Infinity: An Anthology of Contemporary Mathematical Poetry, Edited by Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp (Primary Press, 1979), reacquainted me with this poem by Catherine M. Lynch (1939-2021) -- a poem with its title and its syllable counts bieng Triangular Numbers):
A
Tripod is
A perfect plane as well
As the base of a triple point pencil.
The
Tripleness
In truth, is a kind of
Glory and power just being itself
And
Not even
Sacredness symbolized.
There is something triangular in love.
Follow this link to find more blog postings that involved triangular poems.
Who
can do
mathematics?
What about girls and women
and people of color?
We need to open
our eyes and
our doors!
Even though mathematicians are frequently exploring new ideas and patterns of thought, minds often have been closed against recognizing math skills in varied groups of people. It has taken lots of effort to get math doors opened to women, to people of color. Here are some informative and inspiring videos:
Journeys of Black Mathematicians (A documentary project by George Csicsery)
Meet a Mathematician: Dr. Gizem Karaali
Meet a Mathematician: Dr. Lisa Fauci
One of my recent online pleasures has been visiting the Poetry Blogging Network -- I was led there because it mentions my blog but I also found a rich array of other treasures to explore. One of these is the book of kells -- a blog written by poet, editor, and teacher Kelli Russell Agodon.
One of the very special poems I found (posted on -- I offer below its opening lines:
Zero Sums by Luisa A. Igloria
Driving back from the gym, I listen to
a radio program where two mathematicians
are talking about zero. I'm parked in front
of my house, but their conversation keeps me
glued to the seat. One of them says in math,
whatever operation you do, you need to also be
able to undo—just like with multiplication and
division. Unless you divide by zero, in which case
you get the impossible. Or you get . . . .
Igloria's complete poem is found here..
.More about Virginia poet Luisa Igloria is available here.
This link leads to an earlier blog posting that features work by Igloria.
Guided by Facebook, I have found and explored a variety of Math Poems on YouTube. Here is a sample stanza from a poem that I enjoyed today:
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| from "Beautiful Mystery" by Trixie Batista (here on YouTube) |
This cartoon, found a few days ago on Twitter (X), has reminded me of the role that both mathematics and poetry have in formulating the invisible.
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| Thank you, Grant Snider! |
Recently I discovered an online article -- "Bob Grumman’s mathematical universe: somewhere, minutely, a widening" by mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz) at Synapse International, an international visual poetry gathering, co-edited by Philip Davenport and karl kempton) that celebrates the work of math visual-poet Bob Grumman (1941-2015).. When I visited the article by Glaz, I also found several other articles that celebrated Grumman -- found here at this link for Issue 7, January 2024.
Below I post two of Grumman's Mathemaku -- visual poems that involve mathematical symbols and the brevity of Haiku; one of them is found in the article by Glaz mentioned above and the second is found here (along with others) in an article by karl kempton.
Integrating our fields of knowledge makes them more useful -- a view that has been correct for me, at least, and I am delighted when I find more people integrating poetry with mathematics. This link leads to materials offered by the American Mathematical Society that connect with poetry.
Several years ago an article of mine -- entitled "Everything Connects" -- was published in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts. Below I offer a brief poem from the article (a Fib, with syllable counts equal to the first six Fibonacci numbers). Here is a link to a 2020 blog posting about the article and here is a link to the article. The following Fib is included in the article:
When a person speaks of mathematics and poetry in the same sentence. I am interested -- and recently I came across an early-May financial article by Jason Ma which met that condition; its title and subtitle are:
‘Quant King’ Jim Simons (1938-2024) was a math and investing genius, but also a management wiz. Here are some of his lessons on leadership . . .
The article contains five "guiding principles" -- and I have grouped the words of the 3rd principle (which includes mathematics and poetry) into the following syllable-count triangular poem:
Be
guided
by beauty --
true in doing
mathematics or
writing poetry, but
also true in fashioning
an organization that runs
extremely well, accomplishes its
mission with excellence. Hope for good luck!
One of my recent discoveries of math-poetry is in the activities of Hofstra University professor Johanna Franklin, Franklin asks her students to compose Haiku and she has recently sent me the following material from various courses and semesters:
Math equals patterns
patterns not everyone sees
patterns we all need.
(introduction
to proofs, Spring 2023)
Why do I have my math students write haikus at the end of the semester? Because I love both poetry and playing with words, and the American conception of a haiku strikes me as a perfect poem for a mathematician: the counting of syllables, the symmetry.
One of my frequent interesting reads is the Quote of the Day #QOTD posted on Twitter by Mathematics & Statistics at St Andrews, @StA_Maths-Stats. A few days ago I found there the following mathy-poetic and thought-provoking quote by Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (1909-1984):
The infinite
we shall do right away.
The finite
may take a little longer.
[Quoted in D MacHale, "Comic Sections" (first published in Dublin 1993)]
One of my favorite email subscriptions is to A.Word.A.Day -- a day-to-day collection each week (gathered by Anu Garg) of five related terms to learn anjoy. On April 15, I learned the new word arithmomania -- and quote the following from Garg's posting.
arithmomania PRONUNCIATION: (uh-rith-muh-MAY-nee-uh)
MEANING: noun: An obsessive preoccupation with numbers, calculations, and counting.
Richard Blanco: “An engineer, poet, Cuban American… his poetry bridges cultures and languages – a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future – reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”
– President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Blanco
RICHARD BLANCO is a professional civil engineer and a poet. He read his poem “One Today” at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, who selected him to serve as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history. Blanco's inauguration appearance is reported at this link and connection to his inaugural poem is offered there.
One of my current favorite math-poetry sources is Scientific American -- edited by feminist science writer Dava Sobel and presented each month under the heading Meter. The selection for December, 2022 was "Uncertain-Sea Principle" by Richard Blanco. Here are it's opening lines:
Each year the American Mathematical Society sponsors a student poetry contest-- looking for submissions from students in three categories -- junior high, senior high and college. This year's winners are:
“An Intriguing Mystery” by Jera Feem V. Forro, University of the Philippines Visayas Iloilo City High School
“Meditation on Mathematics” by Chelsea Zhu, Richard Montgomery High School
"Infinity Is Known by Many Names" by Jasmin Mundi, American University
A poster of the winning poems (shown below) is available for order at this link -- where one also finds You-Tube videos of the poets reading their winning poems. For more information about the contest and names of honorable-mention poets and previous years' winners, go here.
An organization that I celebrate -- though not often enough -- is the Association for Women in Mathematics which celebrates its 53rd birthday today. Join me in a visit to the AWM website to explore their programs and a visit to this blog post from 3 years ago that celebrates AWM with a poem.
A delightful stimulus to expand my vocabulary is my subscription to "A.Word.A,Day" by Anu Garg -- and each Monday-through-Friday I get an email notification of a new word. This week's theme is "Words from Geometry" and today's word is tangent -- go here to read, learn, and enjoy Garg's discussion of this word.
And here is a link to this blog's earlier postings that include poetic consideration of the term tangent.
Syllable-count patterns often are used in poems--helping to give a rhythmic tempo to the words. As I mention often, syllable counts -- and other word-patterns -- help me to discover new and special meanings to convey. When I start to write, my thoughts are scattered and need to be gathered and focused -- and a poetic form helps this to happen. The sonnet and the villanelle have long been valued examples of poetry patterns. More recent -- and more simple -- is the Fib. Introduced by poet Gregory Pincus back in 2006, the Fib is a six-line poem whose syllables are counted by the first six Fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. (Each succeeding Fibonacci number is the sum of the two that precede it.)
Since 2006, a journal aptly named The Fib Review has offered (available at this website) more than 40 issues of poems, all of whose lines have syllable-counts that are Fibonacci numbers. Here is a portion of one of the poems -- by Washington-based poet Sterling Warner -- (the complete poem is found here).
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Yesterday, April 23, is the day on which William Shakespeare's birthday is celebrated; he was born long ago in 1564 and the actual date is uncertain. The BBC Radio Newshour today featured this event in its broadcast and told of ways that Shakespeare used mathematical ideas in his writing. A broadcast recording is available at this link; the Shakespeare-math info begins at approximately 25 minutes into the show. Ideas come from a book that is coming out next September, Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare's Mathematical Life and Times by Rob Eastaway.
One of the interesting items I found as I browsed was the phrase
eight score eight in Othello -- a three-syllable way for saying 168.
Here is a link to an article that focuses on Shakespeare's use of zero.
Save
our
Mother
Earth -- conserve
our resources, shift
to non-polluting substances.
As many of you readers know, the poem above is an example of a FIB -- a six-line poem with syllable-counts matching the first six Fibonacci numbers, When I sit down to write about a particular topic, I often find the the FIB format is a good way to start -- developing an idea starting with single words and gradually developing longer phrases. And, today, outside of this blog, I am trying to learn more about earth friendly substances.
If you have time to be interested in more mathy and earth-friendly poems, this link leads to the results of a blog search for climate change and this second link leads to previous Earth Day blog postings.
This link leads to postings -- and poems -- in this blog related to CLIMATE.
It is a delight to me to see math and science publications including poetry! Today I am enjoying the work of North Carolina poet Britt Kaufmann -- Kaufmann works as a math tutor -- and her poem "Midnight Calculus" appeared in the February 2024 issue of Scientific American. The accompanying bio mentioned that Kaufmann took her first calculus course at age 47.
More recently, under the heading "In Celebration of National Poetry Month," MAA FOCUS, the Newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America. another Kaufmann poem appeared, "Z-score of Zero." (A z-score measures exactly how many standard deviations above or below the mean a particular data-number is.) Kaufmann gives us a thoughtful poetic reflection of math on life!
California poet Carol Dorf is a retired math teacher and writer of a very varied library of poems, including many with math connections. It has been my pleasure to read with her at math-poetry readings and to include a number of her poems here in my blog. (This link leads to a list of my many postings of her work here in this blog.)
Browsing online today, I have come across still another one of Dorf's mathy poems which I would like to share. Here are the opening lines of "Spring Again: -- and the complete poem is found here at poetryfoundation.org.
Poet Emily Lutken's first career was as a physician -- she specialized in family medicine and spent many years of practice in the Navaho Nation. Following this she taught middle and high school math and science for several years , , , and now, retired, she has time for music, poetry, and other arts.
On my shelf --- for my frequent rereading and enjoyment -- is a copy of Lutken's 2021 collection, Manifold: poetry of mathematics. (3: A Taos Press, 2021). Here is a favorite poem of mine from that collection:
Prime Syllable Song by Emily Lutken
Prime
numbers
do not care
to make a rhyme.
They blaze wild pathways.
While others tow the line,
they play crwths or smash guitars,
unlike composite counts assigned
to echo harmonic notes in time
and avoid the oddball and ill-defined.
Without primes, though, the music would be boring,
the sing-song regularity, the constant whine
would drive all of us absolutely batshit bonkers.
This link leads to more information about Manifold, in which the poem above is found. This link leads to Lutken's website -- which includes more poetry and a bio of the poet.
This link leads to a poem by Lutken about a solar eclipse.
Another of Lutken's poems, "Ars Parabola," appears in this blog at this link.
"Math problems take on new meaning in this class that combines rhymes and verse with math instruction."
The above quotation comes from the website The Conversation, from a series entitled Uncommon Courses -- a series that highlights unconventional approaches to teaching. In an article entitled "Rhyme and reason -- why a university professor uses poetry to teach math," Ricardo Martinez -- who teaches mathematics education at Penn State University -- tells how math problems take on new meaning in a class that combines rhymes and verse with math instruction.
I have always enjoyed writing poetry. As a high school mathematics teacher, I recall telling my students that everything is and can be connected to math, even creative writing. Then, as a graduate student, I read about people using “I am” poem templates for young people to express who they are through a series of “I am” statements, and I thought to myself, where is the “I am” math poem template? So I created one.
Found today on X (Twitter):
Here is a link to a copy of the 1850 Chebyshev article. This link provides information about Pafnutii (or Pafnuty) Chebyshev (1821-94) and this link leads to info about Joseph Bertrand (1822-1900).
April is National Poetry Month and Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month! Found at the website We are Teachers, a collection of 38 poems for math students; here is one:
Lawrence "Larry" Lesser is a mathematics and statistics professor at the University of Texas in El Paso -- and is also an active poet and song-writer. This link leads to my previous inclusions of his poetry and ideas earlier in this blog. Recently one of Lesser's Facebook postings led me to an article about a student at Kalamazoo College in Michigan who combined math with poetry for her senior project. This article about Elizabeth "Lizzy" Rottenberk tell how her loves for mathematics and poetry connect and it offers the following sample math-poetry pair:
I have a blog entitled "Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics" and I would like Chat GPT to write a blog posting for me.
From ChatGPT:
March is Women's History Month; March 23 1882 is the birthdate of Emmy Noether (1882-1935). Here is a photo of Noether from a Twitter X posting from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at St. Andrews -- and it is followed by a stanza from a poem about Noether that I was inspired to write many years ago; following those lines, a link to previous poetic postings about Noether in this blog.
On Saturday, March 23 at 2 PM, a poetry-event is planned at Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge, California to celebrate the life of poet, math teacher, and activist Amy Uyematsu (1947-2023). It was my pleasure to be connected to Amy via various math-related events and her work has been included in previous postings in this blog. (Here's a link to a list of those earlier posts.)
One of my favorite poems of Amy's is "The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem." The complete poem is found here at Poets. org and in the collection Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics-- and I offer its opening stanzas below.
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| Uyematsu's complete poem is available at this link. |
When I pick up a pen to write on a particular subject, often it is useful me to try to follow a pattern for rhymes or syllable-counts -- for the effort to conform to a pattern challenges me to think about my topic in new ways. In the history of poetry, rhyme-choices were frequent--yielding sonnets, villanelles and a variety of other forms.
In recent years, online and printed versions of poems have become very accessible and the principle, "Rhymes help us remember" has become less of a focus in poetry. One of the popular connections between math and poetry has been the use of Fibonacci numbers to choose syllable counts; especially popular has been the FIB, a six-line stanza in which the syllable-counts are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 -- the first six Fibonacci numbers. (Inventor of the FIB was Greg Pincus, and lots of information is provided here in this 2010 blog posting, Poems with Fibonacci number patterns.)
Soon it will be Pi-Day (3.14) and this year I again call your attention to a poem by one of my long-time favorite poets -- the poem "Pi" by Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012). I offer a portion of the poem below (followed by a link to the complete poem).
from Pi by Wiwlawa Szymborska
(translated from Polish by Clare Cavanaugh and Stanislaw Baranczak (1946-2014)).
The admirable number pi:
three point one four one
All the following digits are also initial,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can’t be comprehended six five three five at a glance,
eight nine by calculation,
seven nine or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything else
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth call it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may
hold out a bit longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn’t stop at the page’s edge. . . .
. . .
The entire Szymborska-poem is may be found here at the website "Famous Poets and Poems" and also here in an online pdf of the booklet Numbers and Faces: A Collection of Poems with Mathematical Imagery -- a collection that I edited on behalf of the Humanistic Mathematics Network.
This link connects to a list of previous blog-posts of Pi-related poems.
Now in March -- in Women's History Month -- many writers are taking a bit of extra time to explore the history and achievements of women. It was my delight to find a March 6 posting here on the Poetry Blogging Network with a list of celebrated women in poetry that includes several writers of mathy poems. Of the ten poets listed, the following five have been included in this blog -- in earlier postings. For each, I include a mathy sample and the poet's name is linked to earlier postings that include their work.
Adrienne Rich from Planetarium
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
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