Enjoying Math-Poetry Connections

           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.