The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics

      Daniel May -- professor at Black Hills State University in South Dakota -- enjoys not only teaching mathematics to future teachers but also exploration of the combinatorics of card games and the poetry of mathematical patterns and ideas.   He spends his summers working with Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM), a mathematics enrichment program for under-served public middle school students in New York City and Los Angeles.

     Below I offer a poem by May that was part of the program at the recent BRIDGES Conference.  (May's poem also is found with lots of BRIDGES poetry and poet-information here at the website of Sarah Glaz.)

          Eight Minutes     by Daniel May

          Eyelids closed,
          warm
          sunlight shining

          bright

          onto my thin skin.
          Earth below me, lush and vibrant from
          our star's
          nearly infinite rays.

BRIDGES Math-Poetry in Halifax -- July 27-31, 2023

     BRIDGES, an annual conference that celebrates connections between mathematics and the arts, will be held this year in Halifax Nova Scotia, July 27-31.  (Conference information available at this link.)  A poetry reading is one of the special event at BRIDGES and Sarah Glaz, retired math professor and poet, is one of the chief organizers of the event.  Here at her University of Connecticut website, Glaz has posted information about the July 30 reading along with bios and sample poems from each of the poets.   For poets not part of this early registration, an Open Mic will be available (if interested, contact Glaz -- contact information is available here at her website.)

Here is a CENTO I have composed using a line of poetry from each of the sample poems (found online at this link) by the 2023 BRIDGES poets:

Seeing the World through a dual prism . . .

     Based in Melbourne, Australia, Tom Petsinis is a mathematics adviser at Deakin University and is author of nine poetry collections as well as theatrical works and books of fiction.  He also is involved in the worldwide BRIDGES organization --which meets annually to investigate and celebrate connections between mathematics and the arts.  This year's BRIDGES conference will be held July 27-31 in Halifax, Nova Scotia and next year's conference is planned for August 1-5, 2024 at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

     Below is "Zero" -- a mathy poem by Petsinis which is also offered as a sample at this BRIDGES link (a link that advertises and celebrates those poets participating in the 2022 conference).

BRIDGES Conference 2022 -- Math-Poetry

      A couple of months ago (here in my June 8 posting) I offered a link to information about poetry to be offered at the 2022 Bridges Math-Arts Conference -- held last week in Finland.  This link leads to a series of YouTube recordings of Bridges mathy poems and this link (at the website of organizer Sarah Glaz) offers written information about Bridges poets as well as sample poems.  Visit, read and listen, learn, enjoy!

     One of my poems that is included on the Bridges poetry site is entitled "Three-fold Asylum" -- a poem that explores various roles of the number three.  I offer it below:

     Three-fold Asylum     by JoAnne Growney

     Third door left on level three, my room
     holds steel furniture—its items three:
     double platform bed (for dreamless sleep),

     square corner desk with three-castered chair
     that spins, loops, and glides from the barred door
     to the dark window that sees nowhere.

Counting, women, loving mathematics

     Here is another Cento from BRIDGES -- for background information, please see my August 4 posting -- this one composed by Erinn and Catherine.  Authors of the four lines are Judy Green, Shakuntala Devi, Anonymous, and Mike Naylor.

 How many women mathematicians can you name?
How many of you love mathematics?
Women count. Men count. People count.
Counting each and every step along this rocky shore.

A CENTO from BRIDGES 2017 Poets

     A cento is a literary work made from quotations from other works -- most often it is a poem, assembled from lines by other poets.    Below I have created a cento from lines written by the poets who have been invited to participate in the July 30 Poetry Reading at the 2017 Bridges Math-Arts Conference in Waterloo, Ontario.  A wonderful program is planned -- it's not too late to register and join us.

       All is number,      mysterious proportions             
       Like Egyptians      burying gold with the dead       
       Golden Fear                    
       that divides and leaves     no remainder   

Euclid's Iron Hand

      Alice Major is a Canadian poet who admits to having loved mathematics since girlhood and who often includes mathematical ideas and images in her poems.  The first poet laureate of Edmonton, Alberta, Major has been instrumental in spreading a love of poetry in many directions and venues.  The selection below, "Euclid's Iron Hand," first appeared in Wild Equations, the Spring 2016 issue of Talking-Writing, an online journal that also in 2012 featured math-related poems and an essay by TW editor, Carol Dorf, "Why Poets Sometimes Think in Numbers."

Both Alice Major and Carol Dorf are part of the Poetry Reading

at this summer's BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference July 27-31 in Waterloo, Ontario.

Will we see you there?

Euclid's Iron Hand    by Alice Major

My iron cannot cope
with non-Euclidean geometry.
Antique and irritable, it insists
on plane surfaces and the fifth postulate,
hissing, Lie down flat, goddamit.  

Choosing what words mean . . .

     Nineteenth century writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) gave his character, Humpty Dumpty, these words:  "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."  And so it is in mathematics -- where, for example, the term "rational" (used in the poem"The Disposition of Art," shown below) has a precise meaning that differs from its typical conversational usage.
     The photo below shows computer-generated art by Silver Spring artist Allen Hirsh -- and, beside it, a framed version of the poem mentioned above.  Our work was exhibited together at last summer's BRIDGES and MAA conferences.  A clearer presentation of Hirsh's art -- "An Outgrabed Mome Rath" -- is available here.  My poem is presented below, beneath the photo.  

Mathematical Modeling

My friend and colleague, University of Connecticut mathematician Sarah Glaz, is an accomplished poet and is active in coordinating math-poetry activities -- via her website, the annual BRIDGES Conference, the anthology Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics . . . .  Here is one of her mathy poems -- this one a pantoum, first published in London Grip.

Mathematical Modelling     by Sarah Glaz

Mathematical modelling may be viewed
As an organizing principle
That enables us to handle
A vast array of information      

Mathy Poetry from Bridges 2014

     This year's math-arts conference, Bridges 2014, was in Korea.  And a dozen of us who write poetry-with-mathematics -- unable to attend in person -- worked with coordinator Sarah Glaz to offer (on August 16, hosted by Mike Naylor) a virtual reading of work videotaped in advance by the poets and edited into a coherent whole by Steve Stamps. 

     The virtual reading is here on YouTube. 

Writing mathy poems - a student activity

On the web-page of mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz I found a link to this file of math-related poems that she prompted students to write when she visited an Arcadia University class session of "Truth and Beauty:  A Course in Mathematics and Literature" taught by mathematician-poet Marion Cohen.  The writing was prompted by an activity-list developed by mathematician-poet Carol Dorf.  Poems by Whitney Boeckel and Olivia Lantz particularly caught my eye and, with their permission, I present them here:

Poets at BRIDGES

These seven poets will be reading math-related poems at the upcoming (July 27-31) BRIDGES Conference in Enschede, the Netherlands; biographical information about the coordinator, Sarah Glaz, and each of the poets is available here. With each poet's name I have offer a date that is linked to one of my postings of his/her work:         
          Michael Bartholomew-Biggs    19 October 2012
          Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya   10 March 2013
          Carol Dorf   31 May 2011
          Sarah Glaz   7 November 2011
          Emily Grosholz  24 September 2010
          Alice Major   30 December 2012
          Eveline Pye 12 April 2012
Here (and also to be offered at BRIDGES) is an elegant and thoughtful poem by Alice Major  -- "For Mary, Turning Sixty" -- that compares mathematical meanings of terms with personal ones. 

BRIDGES 2013 -- Math-Art in the Netherlands

Since 1998, Summer BRIDGES Conferences have been held -- enthusiastic gatherings where theater and visual art and music and poetry and mathematics engage participants in lively exchange.  This year's conference is July 27-31 in Enschede, the Netherlands, and mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz has organized an outstanding group of talented readers to share their poetry on Sunday, July 28.  Following the featured readers will be an open reading -- and interested readers are invited to email Glaz using the address found here. 
      One of  the scheduled readers on July 28 in Enschede is Scottish poet and statistician Eveline Pye; shown below is one of the poems she will read --  "Love of Algebra" : 

Celebrate 3.14 with poems of Pi

     Soon this year's version of the date 3.14 will arrive.  Pi-day!
     At the 2012 Bridges Conference in Towson MD I had the opportunity to hear "Art of π," a presentation by Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya that told of ways that the special number π has inspired artists and writers.  This blog has previously celebrated π -- for example on 6 September 2010 (featuring work by Kate Bush,  Robert Morgan and Wislawa Szymborska),  10 September 2010 (mnemonics for π, especially from Mike Keith) , 15 March, 2011,(a poem by Lana Hechtman Ayers)  27 November 2011 (a poem by Brian McCabe). 

Symmetry in poetry

In Euclidean Geometry, objects retain their size and shape during rigid motions (also called symmetries); one of these is translation -- movement of an object from one place to another along a straight line path.  Here are a few lines by Alberta poet Alice Major that explore the paths of rhyme as a sound moves to and fro within a poem :

     Rhyme's tiles slide
               from line
     to line, a not-so-rigid motion --
     a knitted, shifting symmetry
               that matches 'tree' 

JHM -- many math poems

     Volume 2, Issue 2 (July 2012) of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics has recently become available online -- and it has lots of poetry.  One valuable resource has been gathered by Charlotte Henderson, a participant in the January 2012 poetry reading at JMM in Boston; Charlotte offers a report on that reading and also has prepared a folder of the poems read there, collected for our ongoing enjoyment.  In this issue also there are poems by Florin Diacu, Ursula Whitcher, and Paige S. Orland and some kind words about this blog by Gregory E. Coxson (JoAnne Growney's Poetry-With-Mathematics Blog -- An Appreciation); many thanks, Greg.
      In the wake of the BRIDGES math-art conference at Towson University last week I also want to mention the lively blog posting about BRIDGES by Justin Lanier at Math Munch. 

For Hazlett -- an Exquisite Corpse poem

At the recent BRIDGES Math-Art Conference at Towson University, I led a Sunday afternoon Poetry-with-Mathematics Workshop.  One of our writing topics was women mathematicians and, using material from a richly varied website of biographies of math-women, supported by Agnes Scott College, we workshop participants read a bio of Olive Clio Hazlett (1890-1974) and each wrote sentences of the form "This woman . . . " which I have assembled and and slightly edited into the following poem.

Bridges in Coimbra

     Newton's binomial is as beautiful as Venus de Milo.
     What happens is that few people notice it.

                -- Fernando Pessoa (as Álvaro de Campos) (1888-1935)
                    translated from the Portuguese by Francisco Craveiro