A Mathematician's Villanelle

     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?

Geometry List Poem

      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!

"Celebration of the Mind" Day -- October 21

     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!  

Halloween -- Counting Pumpkins

     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.  

More about Raffi and Ken Whitely available at this  link.

A Poem Structured by a Finite Field

       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.

Ada Lovelace Day -- this year October 8

      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."

     I have posted poetry about Ada Lovelace several times in this blog; here is a link to those past postings.  The following poetic words -- by Ada Lovelace  -- concerning translation of mathematical principles into practical forms -- were first posted back in September of 2015. 

Classroom Difficulties with Mathematics

     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.)