Fourteen years ago, back in October of 2011, I posted a poem of mine entitled, "Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful" (at this link). Written more than thirty years ago, this continues to be one of my favorites of my mathy poems. I offer a portion of it below.
Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful by JoAnne Growney
Timidly I ask
each one I meet if they
find mathematics beautiful
or useful, and each one dares to say,
"Useful, of course. I use it every day."
And if I seem to want a proof,
they all go on to tell
that daily they subtract and add
to keep a checkbook; sometimes also
they multiply to find how many squares
they need to tile the kitchen floor.
and minus, not just counting one,
two, three. There are rules to bend
defiantly, so parallels
will meet before infinity. Look
at the magic of unending terms
that converge to a finite sum:
, , , , , the complete poem may be found at this link.
This poem, "Like Poetry, Mathematics is Beautiful," also had an earlier appearance -- back in 1993, it appeared in the Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal -- and here is a link to the items collected in that 1993 issue.
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