Science in Meter and Verse (from Sci. Amer.)

 Combining math and parenting . .. 

        It delights me that Scientific American includes science-related poetry -- and when my monthly issue arrives I turn first to the monthly poem.  Here are the opening stanzas of  'The Algorithm' by California poet Barbara Quick from the May, 2022  issue.

Optimization under uncertainty
is a field of study in which my grown son
will earn his Ph.D. The math, in his case,
concerns the production of wind energy.

He reads his papers aloud on the phone to me
as a way to optimize their clarity,
so that even a layperson, such as myself,
can understand what he’s saying,
in between each beautifully made
equation and graph.

                       . . .                            Quick's complete poem is available at this link.

Small Child, Loud Noise

Sent to me by poet Jacqueline Lapidus, I have this slightly mathy poem:

        The Screaming Toddler Ratio

The volume of the voice is in inverse proportion to the size of the speaker/screamer. When I hear that screech in a store, I follow it to the stroller, squat down to eye level in spite of knee, and whisper, "Are you the very small person who's making that GREAT BIG NOISE?" Invariably, the kid stops screaming and looks at me with an expression that says, how the hell did she know?" I smile at the toddler, the toddler smiles back. I stand up and explain basic math to the grateful parent. Short people know! (I'm 2" shorter than when we first connected, of course.) Teachers, too.

Previous mentions of work by Lapidus in this blog may be found at this link.

The last -- for which the first was made . . .

 

I found this poem online here at poets.org.

Biographical information about Robert Browning also is found at the above link.

A Pleasure or a Puzzle?

     A few weeks ago (during National Poetry Month) I came upon an opinion piece by Danny Heitman in the The Washington POST with this title:  "I read poetry for work.  You get to read it for pleasure."  And today I am thinking about duality of roles for mathematics activity as well as for poetry -- a pleasure or a puzzle??  I celebrate both.

Danny Heitman is the editor of Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum magazine and the author of “A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.”    Heitman explains:  As the editor of a magazine that includes a poetry column, I routinely read poems because I have to. But I also delve into poems for pleasure, something that makes me an outlier among America’s readers. According to a National Endowment for the Arts survey conducted in 2022, only 11.5 percent of American adults had read or listened to poetry in the previous year. When friends and I talk about what’s on our reading

And below, from the Spring, 2009 issue of Phi Kappa Phi Forum is a mathy poem by Robert Lima (1935-2022), for many years a Professor at Penn State University.

Resisting Disability with Poetry and Math

We different humans have different abilities . . . 

Zoeglossia is a literary organization seeking to pioneer a new, inclusive space for poets with disabilities.  Launched in 2017, Zoeglossia is the first such organization in the poetry landscape. The idea is to provide an intersectional community open to a wide range of disability poetics, encouraging conversation and support.  This link leads to a wide variety of poems that explore the experiences and consequences of illnesses and disabilities . .. and I offer a the opening portion of a sample from that collection below.

Number Twenty       by Jonathan Mack

This, the story that brings me to you, is one story in twenty. In the other nineteen I am dead. In five stories I’m dead of AIDS, having suffered every possible infection and died at home, in a variety of hospitals, and in the toilet of a theater. There are seven suicides between the ages of twelve and twenty-five. There are two terrible car accidents -- one involving a drunk driver and one that is entirely my fault. In one story I live only three days and  . . .

        Jonathan Mack's poem is from This New Breed. Copyright © 2002 by Jonathan Mack.