Counting , , ,

 Here are the opening stanzas of a thoughtful poem by mathematician-writer Marian Christie:

Christie's complete poem is available here on her website and previous inclusions of her work in this blog may be found at this link.

Short word problems: do the math

       Raymond Nat Turner is the poet-in-residence for Black Agenda Report (a website of news, commentary, and analysis from the black left) -- and I have found and been moved by his mathy poem of protest entitled "Short word problems: do the math" l  I offer its opening stanzas below, followed by a link to the complete poem.

YouTube Video Celebrates Omar Khayyam

 Enjoy a 1-minute video celebrating 

the MATH and POETRY of  Omar Khayyam 

This Mathematician Solved Impossible Equations

                               While Writing Poetry -- YouTube   

This blog posting -- from long ago in 2011 -- also features Khayyam.

Omar Khayyam  (1048–1131) was a Persian poet and polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and Persian literature.  He was born in Nishapur, Iran and lived during the Seljuk era, around the time of the First Crusade. 

Cross BRIDGES ... 2026 Bridges Galway Conference

    Each year an international BRIDGES Conference celebrates the connections between mathematics and the arts -- featuring connections with music, literature, visual art, theater . . . Here is a link to the website for the 2026 BRIDGES Conference -- to be held August 5-8 in Galway, Ireland. 

    An important and popular part of each BRIDGES Conference is a Poetry Reading.  Scheduled for Saturday, August 8, 2026, the formal reading will include mathy poems from each of the poets named below; on this webpage (maintained by poetry reading co-organizer--and poet--Sarah Glaz) each of the following names is linked to biographical information and a sample poem.  

Sadness -- Math-Poet Emily Grosholz has passed . . .

        I have been saddened to learn of the death, early in May, of  philosopher, writer, and professor at Penn State University -- and a frequent contributor to this blog --  Emily Rolfe Grosholz.  (Here is a link to her informative obituary.)

       In remembrance of Emiy, here is the opening stanza of her poem ""In Praise of Fractals" -- posted in this blog at this link back in November, 2014.

from "In Praise of Fractals" by Emily Grosholz

This link leads to a list of citations of Emily Grosholz and her work in this blog.

Let's Play Math -- and double Pi!

     A website that I enjoy visiting and one that many current math teachers could enjoy visiting often is 

Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math – Helping families to learn and enjoy math together.

Learn more about Gaskins here in this biographical sketch -- and enjoy her Let's Play Math blog. Here is a link to a posting with several mathy poems:   Math Makers: Write a Poem – Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math.  Here is one of my favorite examples of her postings:

Celebrate Juneteenth!

     This month, America celebrates its Juneteenth, commemorating the day the last group of enslaved African Americans was informed they were free. Juneteenth marks the events of June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas when the last Black slaves of the Confederacy were ordered free following the arrival of Union troops.  Also called Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, the holiday rose to national prominence in 2020 amid nationwide protests against ongoing racial inequities, sparked in part by the police killings of George Floyd, a Black man, and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman. Juneteenth has been long celebrated by the Black community but was officially recognized as a federal holiday by President Joe Biden in 2021.

When is Juneteenth?  Juneteenth is on Friday, June 19, this year.

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.

Put a Fibonacci poem in your pocket!

       Each year the month of April is celebrated as National Poetry Month  -- and upcoming April 29, 2026 is this year's Poem in Your Pocket Day.  

       I invite you to explore this blog to find a poem you'd love to carry in your pocket . . . .and, below, I provide another possible pocket-poem -- this one a poem whose line-syllables are counted by the Fibonacci numbers.  These lines below are the opening lines of a poem by Arizona State professor and writer Punya Mishra; the complete poem is offered at this link:

This link leads to previous blog postings that offer Fibonacci poems.

Waiting for good and kind . . .

Only a bit of math ... but an important concern ... needing a solution:

This link leads to more mathy poems in this blog 

by Langston Hughes (1901-1967).

2026 AMS Math-Poetry Contest Winners

        Today I have discovered the wonderful list of winning poems from this years Math-Poetry Contest sponsored by the American Mathematical Society.  This link to the AMS website offers links to thirteen winning poems , ,, , I encourage you to follow the link and enjoy . . . and encourage students you know to explore math-poetry connections.

       Below I offer the opening stanzas of a very fine poem by one of the AMS winners -- Jaycee Chen from the STEAM Academy at John F. Kennedy School.  Chen's poem received an Honorable Mention in the Middle School Division.

A Quiet Music of Numbers     by Jaycee Chen

April -- Celebrate BOTH Mathematics and Poetry

       April is National Poetry Month AND National Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month -- and here in this blog we continue to celebrate poetry-math connections.  Below I offer the opening stanzas of an old poem of mine entitled "Time".

          The clock goes round --
          making time a circle
          rather than a line.
          Each year's return to spring
          layers time on time.

A Poetic Triangle of Numbers

The shape and patterns of the following lines have me thinking of them as a visual poem:

 1 x 1 = 1

11 x 11 = 121

111 x 111 = 12321

1111 x 1111 = 1234321

11111 x 11111 = 123454321

111111 x 111111 = 12345654321

1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321

11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321

111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

Scientific American Shares Rhymes

      Lots of years ago, an important part of my awareness of poems that involve math came from reading work by Martin Gardner in his "Mathematical Games" in Scientific American . . . and it has been a delight to me to find poetry again in my issues of that magazine.   METER, a Scientific American feature edited by Dava Sobel, offers a bit of science-related poetry each month -- and the April 2026 issue features three mathy limericks by Jeffrey Branzburg (a retired math teacher and technology consultant).  I offer one of these limericks below.

       Topology     by Jeffrey Branzburg

Mathematics . . . is loaded with poetry

        Online I have learned about a recent lecture by Werner Herzog at Brooklyn Public Library's Pi-Day celebration:  Is Math Art? Werner Herzog Says Yes.  

Quoting from Herzog's presentation:

"Beyond all of this, I do believe mathematics is a new form of art. . . It is loaded with meaning.  It's not just an aesthetic or a form of abstract painting.  It's loaded with poetry."

Celebrate the "Year of Math"

     A Congressional Resolution declaring 2026 as a Year of Math in the U.S. was introduced in the Senate (on 12/18/2025) by its co-sponsors, Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R,WV) and John Hickenlooper (D, CO), and in the House (on 3/92/2026) by its co-sponsors, Representatives Chrissy Houlahan (D, PA-6) and Jay Obernolte (R, CA-23). We deeply appreciate that this is a bipartisan effort in both chambers.

Each of the Senate and the House resolved that it: 

(1) expresses support for the declaration of a “Year of Math” in the United States;