Poems affect our spirits as well as our minds. And Split This Rock is looking for poems that protest and witness, world-changing poems. Go here for information about their Eighth Annual Poetry Contest (with submission deadline November 1, 2014).
Here in this blog, as I present connections between poetry and mathematics, I provide some poems of protest and advocacy. I advocate attention to problems of climate change -- to keep our world habitable; I advocate full recognition of women in the sciences -- for a not dissimilar reason. We must not waste our resources.
One translation of a famous frog-pond Haiku by Basho was offered on 21 June 2010. Dozens of different translations of that same Haiku are supplied here. It offers a simple picture:
old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water translated by Jane Reichhold
From this, it is a small step to a Save the Frogs website where we find information concerning the threats of climate change along with advocacy for endangered frogs. And, keeping in mind Basho's Haiku, we find a startling counterpart in the following:
Ancient pond
Frog jumps
No sound of water by Carolanne Reynolds
At TreeHugger.com we find a poem by former British Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion that highlights consequences of climate change. Here (with a nod to Robert Frost) is its final stanza:
Our woods were lovely, dark and deep.
A landscape we’d made promises to keep.
Until we deemed the price too steep.
Until we deemed the price too steep.
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