Poet Jonathan Holden (1941-2024) -- who, early in his career, was a math teacher -- died just a few weeks ago. Seeing his death notice has reminded me to revisit and again enjoy and appreciate his work. My first mention of Holden's work in this blog was in this posting in January, 2011 -- and here is a link to the list of postings in which his poetry is featured.
Two of Holden's mathy poems are included in the anthology that was gathered by mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz and me -- Strange Attractors, Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters/ CRC Press, 2008). One of these is "The Departure of an Alphabet," a poem that deals with age-related decline of memory and reasoning. I offer its opening lines:
My father tested as a genius,
in mathematics, but not
in hospitals
where he would become
the model pupil, obedient,
passive. I was teaching
trigonometry but having trouble
deriving the formula
for the cosine of the sum
of two angles.
Alpha plus Beta.
Could he help? I knew
he needed stimulation.
Mathematics . . . energized him. . . . .
As noted above, Holden's complete poem is found in
Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics
More mathy poems by Holden in this blog may be found at this link.
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