Using the Golden Ratio to Construct Poems

     Poetic constraints such as syllable-counts and rhymes may seem at first glance to pose difficulties in constructing a poem BUT those of us who have explored using constraints very often find that meeting the imposed constraints guides us to new and creative thinking.  At the July, 2025 Bridges Conference, Sarah Glaz and Lisa Lajeunesse offered a workshop that explored writing strategies derived from this ratio.  (Here is a link to the abstract for the workshop -- and at that link you also can download a pdf of the complete paper.)  Below I offer a couple of samples of their "golden ratio" poems.

Learning by Writing

The above statement comes from a blog posting by Denise Gaskins -- in her blog, Let's Play Math, at this link.  Here's more from that post:

Journaling Prompt 20: Math Poetry: The Square

More of Humanistic Mathematics

     Last week I mentioned the current (July, 2025) issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics and today I want to again call attention to the array of poetry that is in this issue; here is a ink to the Table of Contents and the photo below offers a list of poetry titles and authors.  (Visit the JHM website; explore and enjoy; several delightful stanzas from Vijay Fafat and Cristian Ramirez Rodriguez  were offered in this previous blog post.)

In a 2023 issue, in the JHM Section entitled The World of Mathematics, two of the eight articles involve poetry -- the 2nd and third articles named below; to get to the Table of Contents and access to the articles, follow this link.

Celebrating Poetry at 2025 BRIDGES Conference

     A lavish and wonderful celebration of connections between mathematics and the arts is the annual international BRIDGES, Mathematics and the Arts Conference.  This year's conference took place last month (July, 2025 in Eindhoven, Netherlands) and one of its special events was a poetry reading.  

     Information about the poets and sample poems are available here at the website of Sarah Glaz (mathematician-poet and coordinator of the BRIDGES readings).  Below I have included one of these very special poems:

View no Fiery Night        by Marian Christie 

No
one
went to   
the tower
to vie with the foe.
Fretting, worn, we rove in night fog ––
the ring, the theft, the vow forgotten. Hovering high
over the town, the frightening wyvern, whirr of her winging interwoven with fire.

Poetry in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

      Twice a year a new issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics is published online; here is a link to the Table of Contests for the July, 2025 issue which I have recently enjoyed browsing.   This issue contains a plentiful variety of poems and articles related to poetry.  The term "Linear Poem" was a concept new to me -- found here in the article, "Introducing the Linear Poem" by Cristian Ramirez Rodriguez -- and I offer it below:

     Linear Poems
     Are poems where each line
     increases or deceases by the same number of 
     words every single line, this number is the slope, m, and
     the words in title are b (intercept); Here m is 3, b is 2.

The author goes on to tell how he has used this form with math students -- and he offers additional examples.