For those of us who live and breathe mathematics, there is much of it that affects us deeply. Even those of us whose mathematics is mostly arithmetic have a literature of number that we hold close . And does anything affect us more than the counting rhymes of our childhood? Washington, DC poet Rosemary Winslow uses emotionally-charged repetition of nursery-rhyme numbers to help us know incest in "Four Five Six."
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
How much for a digit of PI?
Scottish poet Brian McCabe writes playfully of numbers. In the following poem he imagines an auction of the digits of π.
Three Point One Four One Five Nine Two
Six Five Three Five Eight Nine Seven Nine
Three Two Three Eight Four Six Two Six
Four Three Three Eight Three Two
Seven Nine Five Zero Two Eight by Brian McCabe
Three Point One Four One Five Nine Two
Six Five Three Five Eight Nine Seven Nine
Three Two Three Eight Four Six Two Six
Four Three Three Eight Three Two
Seven Nine Five Zero Two Eight by Brian McCabe
Labels:
Brian McCabe,
calculation,
computation,
Ludolf van Ceulen,
pi,
Polygon,
zero
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Open and Closed -- Tomas Transtromer
A background in mathematics gives my enchantment with words a special twist. Each time I see familiar math terms in a poem I layer their mathematical meanings amid their mainstream ones. Two such terms are "open" and "closed." (I'll supply brief mathematical explanation at the end of this post but, first, here is "Open and Closed Spaces" -- a poem by the winner of the 2011 Nobel prize for Literature, Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer. )
Monday, November 21, 2011
Reading the Rubaiyat
Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) was a mathematician who wrote poetry. Here are two quatrains from his Rubaiyat.
XLVI
For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
XLVI
For in and out, above, about, below,
'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show
Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.
Labels:
mathematician,
nothing,
Omar Khayyam,
poet,
poetry,
Rubaiyat
Friday, November 18, 2011
Equivalence
In telling the time, we commonly refer to hours that differ by a multiple of 12 using the same number. Sixty hours after 3 o'clock it is again 3 o'clock. The clock relationship -- with its times that are named by the same number but are not, after all, exactly the same -- illustrates the mathematical notion of an "equivalence relation." In "Equivalencies," the insights of poet Judith McCombs stretch this mathematical concept.
Equivalencies by Judith McCombs
The fear of not writing, of having no words,
Is the muscles not working, the pack top-heavy,
the hard slime on ledges where the ankle gives way
Equivalencies by Judith McCombs
The fear of not writing, of having no words,
Is the muscles not working, the pack top-heavy,
the hard slime on ledges where the ankle gives way
Labels:
congruence,
equal,
equivalence,
equivalence relation,
Judith McCombs,
WordWorks
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Portrait of Max Dehn
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Portraits of a mathematician
Ideas for this posting began with my post on 30 October 2011 in which I selected 7 favorite lines of poetry as a sort of self-portrait. That posting led to an exchange with blogger Peter Cameron -- which prompted me to write these abecedarian portraits of a mathematician.
I know a mathematician . . . by JoAnne Growney
always busy
counting, doubting
every figured guess,
haply idling,
juggling, knowing
logic, measure, n-dimensions,
originating
playful quests,
resolutely seeking theorems,
unknowns vanish :
wrong xs, ys -- zapped.
I know a mathematician . . . by JoAnne Growney
always busy
counting, doubting
every figured guess,
haply idling,
juggling, knowing
logic, measure, n-dimensions,
originating
playful quests,
resolutely seeking theorems,
unknowns vanish :
wrong xs, ys -- zapped.
Labels:
abecedarian poem,
geometry,
guess,
JoAnne Growney,
mathematician,
poem,
poetry,
portrait,
theorem
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Mathematics of desire
Last Monday evening, I listened with pleasure to Pennsylvania (Fogelsville) poet Barbara Crooker read at Cafe Muse (with Meredith Davies Hadaway and Erin Murphy). Barbara writes fine poems -- and reads them well. Although she offered no mathematical poems that evening, hearing her reminded me to hunt for her love poem "The Irrational Numbers of Longing . . " and to offer it to you here:
Labels:
Barbara Crooker,
geometry,
infinite,
intersection,
irrational,
mathematics,
negative,
poem,
postive
Monday, November 7, 2011
Mathematician-Poet Glaz
Sarah Glaz, a professor-mathematician at the University of Connecticut -- and a poet -- is at the forefront of appreciation and advocacy of mathematics as an art and closely connected to other arts, particularly poetry. Her webpage offers more than a hundred links to "Undergraduate Resources; Math Links for Information and Fun" and to scholarly articles that offer teachers and students math-poetry ideas to ponder carefully. This link, for example goes to an article entitled "The Poetry of Prime Numbers" that Glaz presented at the Bridges 2011 Conference in Portugal.
One of my favorites of Glaz' poems is this one whose structure relies on the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic (see note following the poem). Here is "January 2009" :
One of my favorites of Glaz' poems is this one whose structure relies on the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic (see note following the poem). Here is "January 2009" :
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Four colors will do
As I work with Gizem Karaali, an editor of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, to plan a reading of mathematical poetry at the JMM (Joint Mathematics Meetings) in Boston on 6 January 2012, my thoughts return to a poetry reading that I helped to organize at JMM in Baltimore in 1992. One of the participants was a friend and former colleague, Frank Bernhart, whose work is guided by the rhythm pattern of a well-known song.
Bernhart is an expert on the Four-Color Theorem and his poem celebrates its history -- including consideration of its proof (in 1976) by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken. (The theorem asserts that any map drawn on a flat surface or on a sphere requires only 4 colors to ensure that no regions sharing a boundary segment have the same color.)
Bernhart is an expert on the Four-Color Theorem and his poem celebrates its history -- including consideration of its proof (in 1976) by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken. (The theorem asserts that any map drawn on a flat surface or on a sphere requires only 4 colors to ensure that no regions sharing a boundary segment have the same color.)
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Division by zero
The November 2011 issue of the Scottish ezine, The Bottle Imp, is just out and it includes my review of poet Brian McCabe's Zero (Polygon, 2009). To stir your interest, I include a few lines from McCabe's title poem (which chronicles the irregular history of zero) -- and then offer a human interpretation of division by zero in a poem by Ann McNeal.
Labels:
Ann McNeal,
Brian McCabe,
division by zero,
Mayapple,
Polygon,
The Bottle Imp,
zero
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