Mathy Lines from the Poet Laureate

     Born in New York City (1950) and of Asian heritage, poet Arthur Sze is the 25th US Poet Laureate (named on September 15, 2025) and the first Asian American to hold that position.   In the October 20, 2025 issue of The New Yorker, we find Sze's poem, "Library of Congress,"  which opens with these somewhat mathy lines:

        You peer down a lit corridor
        on the fifth tier of stacks
        where a million books breathe
        on shelves, here's a book
        on neutrinos, captured in Antarctica,
        here's another on solar flares.
        A curator displays a book
        in Vai script and points to a triangle
        with two dots, you wonder . . . 

Mathematics organizes libraries!

More poetry from Sze can be found here;  
scroll down below the bio to find titles and links.

Poetry Comics Month -- with a bit of Math

     Poetry-comic-artist Grant Snider posts wonderfully illustrated and entertaining verses online -- on X (Twitter) @grantdraws -- and sometimes his postings are mathy. Here is a link to an interview with Snider.  Snider has indicated in his postings that our current month of October is Poetry Comics Month,  Here is a link to one of his past poetry-comics-month postings -- and below I offer one of his illustrated mathy haiku.

World Nursery Rhyme Week

 On X I learned that this week -- November 10-14, 2025 -- is World Nursery Rhyme Week, and I searched and found this website that offers information about the week and these "5 official rhymes for 2025":

    Monday, 10th -- Sing a Song of Sixpence  
         Tuesday, 11th -- Humpty Dumpty
    Wednesday, 12th -- When I Was One (I played the drum)
         Thursday, 13th -- I Hear Thunder
     Friday, 14th -- Two Little Dickie Birds

Here at this website are all of the above except "Two Little Dickie Birds" -- which I offer a version of below.  (Here in Wikipedia is more about that rhyme.)

Simplifying Mathematics with Poetry

 At this link, I found the following math-poetry information:

      JOHANNESBURG - Some good news for struggling mathematics students:

Award-winning author Botshelo Mthomboti has a solution for you.   In her book, Poetic Atmosphere of Mathematics, Mthomboti simplifies the subject through poetry. The 22-year-old Financial Management graduate has also penned two other books, A Black Child Transformed by Accounting, and The Poetic Atmosphere of Income Tax.

     Here is a link to a YouTube video of a news story -- entitled "Poetic Solutions to Complex Problems" -- that tells of Mthomboti and shares her poem entitled "Multiplication and Division of Variables."    And here is more about Mthomboti.

THANK YOU, Botshelo Mthomboti, for the enthusiastic energy you give to mathematics.  

"Who Counts, Counts" -- by Stephanie Strickland

       Stephanie Strickland is a poet whom I know and much admire -- and her work contains a rich variety of math-poetry creations; her poems have been featured in several posts in this blog (Here's a link to those postings.)  Today I had the good fortune to refind another of her poems -- not yet posted herein -- and I offer it below.  

     Who Counts, Counts      by Stephanie Strickland

          Baby and you
          --and me,
          we will make three,

                 but baby-and-me
                 are different; we're two-
                 who-are-one.