BRIDGES -- connecting math and poetry

     The BRIDGES Math-Arts organization held its 2021 conference (early in August) online  -- and, although many of the meetings were available only to registrants, archives of papers are available at this link to all who are interested.  

BRIDGES papers and events that link poetry and mathematics have been thoughtfully publicized by University of Connecticut emeritus professor Sarah Glaz who has created a webpage "Mathematical Poetry at Bridges" for that purpose.  On that webpage are links to pages for individual Bridges conferences as far back as 2010 -- with poetry involvement in the conferences increasing in the later years.  Here is a link to "Mathematical Poetry at Bridges 2021" -- a page with links to sample poems from more than 30 poets and also video readings of numerous poems.     VISIT the site and savor the poems.

Below I offer one of the poems from the Bridges 2021 site.  Playing with various ideas of "infinity" poet and math teacher Amy Uyematsu has created "This Thing Called Infinity" -- and she given me permission to offer it here. 

     This Thing Called Infinity     by Amy Uyematsu

            “Then again, a very different sort of infinity may well be freewheeling you.”
                         Natalie Angier, “The Life of Pi, and Other Infinities”
 
     Impossible to grasp yet I’m sure it exists,
     sure as the fact that I won’t be around by 2047 --
     which would make me a century old --
     and my little grandsons close to middle age.
     I know about infinity whenever I admire a passion flower,
     feel myself pulled into its oddly perfect symmetry.

     Or ponder snowflakes, shooting stars and soap bubbles.
     Scientists tell us there are different kinds of infinities --
     some are flat, others hunchback, inflating, explosive.
     Mathematicians are the real jokesters when it comes
     to playing with the mind -- how counting from 1 to forever
     is somehow smaller than the set of all values
     between 1 and 2, or as I used to ask my students,
     take half of a half of a half and never stop.
     Some notions of the infinite can rattle the nerves --
     like the possibility there are many earths
     and someone exactly like you or me
     with a totally opposite or identical life,
     or there are galaxies of multiplying gods,
     planets that will never be at war.
     And what about time?  These last hours I count
     in my brief life -- the way grief can make time endless
     and delight mere seconds which tickle and tease us
     in unending supply.  Old Man Pythagoras
     was insecure about the whole matter -- 
     deeming the finite masculine and good,
     while infinity was feminine -- both had to be
     subjugated -- as if either could.
     I rather like being a woman who tries
     to embrace the ever emerging infinite, especially
     when it comes to love and my own unfolding
     of wonder after wonder. 

Thank you, Bridges poets, for all these poems !!!