The Art of Numbers

    A good friend who is a strong and active supporter of math-poetry links is Annapolis Naval Academy Professor Greg Coxson -- and, in a recent article (in this newsletter from a subgroup of the Mathematical Association of America -- MAA) entitled  "Meet Me on the Bridge Between Mathematics and Poetry," Coxson offers several poems.  One of these is "The Art of Numbers"  by Scotland mathematician-poet Eveline Pye -- and she has given me permission to offer it in my blog:

       The Art of Numbers     by Eveline Pye

            We talk of beautiful words, art, buildings
            when they're not part of the natural world.
            An x in Algebra is no more abstract than
            an idea in philosophy,  just more useful.    

            It can't be use that makes the difference.
            Keats found beauty in a Grecian urn,
            surely practical at some stage of its life:
            no one is blind to the beauty of symmetry.

            We understand Blake's awe of the tiger's stripes.
            Why not awe at Gaussian curves?  Of course,
            I know there is no great beauty in a single number.
            in a four or a seven or an eight, but it's the same

            with the alphabet.  Where is the wonder in a b
            or a k or a t?  It's a sublime combination,
            relationship between letters
            that create words and sounds we love.

            Look.  See the numbers shine in my eyes.

     Mathematician-Poet Eveline Pye was an Operational Research Analyst for Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines, in Zambia, and then a Statistics Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, in Scotland -- and is a widely published poet.   Her latest publication, Reaching the Light, explores recovery from a fractured childhood, Seahorse Publications (2024).  Here is a link to the multiple previous mentions of Pye in earlier posts in this blog.     And this link leads to previous inclusions of Greg Coxson in this blog.