Collections of Mathy Poetry

    My friend and colleague, Marian Christie, has let me know that the math-poetry collection (with commentary) that she published in 2021 -- From Fibs to Fractals: Exploring Mathematical Forms in Poetry -- is now available for free download on her website. Here is the link for downloading.   AND, this link leads to samples of Christie's own mathy poems. published earlier in her blog.

      Today I have been browsing From Fibs to Fractals.  In an entertaining and informative chat in Christie's opening chapter about the Fibonacci numbers, I encountered this sample, a six-line syllable-count Fib poem by contemporary American poet B. A. France:

       Looking     by B. A. France

               moon
               light
               rising
               above the
               skeletal treetops
               she wonders what tomorrow brings   

Consideration of anthologies of mathy poems brings to mind my first encounter with them.  In the early 1980s I found -- at a math-conference book exhibit -- the anthology, Against Infinity, a collection of mathy poems edited by Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp and published by Primary Press in 1979 (now out of print but available at some used-book websites).  The following poem by artist Ilse Bing (1899-1998), "Infinitesimal," appears -- with accompanying visual art -- in that collection.

     Infinitesimal     by   Ilse Bing

          Infinitesimal is the nearest to zero
          infinitesimal is so small
          that it is no longer something
          but it is not yet nothing

          if jumping into the water
          you detect the instant
          when you are no more in the air
          and not yet in the water
          you grasp the infinitesimal

          this infinitesimal instant
          lies at the point
          where the possible and the impossible
          touch each other.

Here is a link to other selections from Against Infinity in earlier postings in this blog.