California poet Carol Dorf is a retired math teacher and writer of a very varied library of poems, including many with math connections. It has been my pleasure to read with her at math-poetry readings and to include a number of her poems here in my blog. (This link leads to a list of my many postings of her work here in this blog.)
Browsing online today, I have come across still another one of Dorf's mathy poems which I would like to share. Here are the opening lines of "Spring Again: -- and the complete poem is found here at poetryfoundation.org.
Monday, April 15, 2024
The Geometry of Distraction
Thursday, November 9, 2023
A Mathy-Poetic Trajectory
Carol Dorf is a retired math teacher and poet -- and at New Verse News I have discovered one of her recent mathy poems, "TRAJECTORY," posted on 10/09/2023. I offer its opening lines below.
from TRAJECTORY by Carol Dorf
The problem set gives us: a stone, force, an angle.
Given this, predict when the stone will hit the ground.
Outside the book this problem grows more complex
even if there are no dragons to interfere with the trajectory.
Imagine a missile. No don’t. There’s no need to imagine:
haven’t you opened the paper today? Imagine a war
where children’s bodies form the location of the necessary
violence. Don’t authorities always say necessary?
. . . . . Dorf's complete TRAJECTORY is available at this link.
Carol Dorf is a Zoeglossia fellow, whose poetry has been published in several chapbooks and in a wide variety of journals; and she is a founding poetry editor of Talking Writing.
Here is a link to the New Verse News website -- a collection of many, many poems. This link leads to poems at that site by Carol Dorf, including "Trajectory."
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Math-Poetry -- when distinct worlds collide . . .
Carol Dorf has been a long-time leader in math poetry projects. A now-retired secondary school math teacher from California, Carol is the poetry editor of the online journal Talking Writing -- an online journal that has included a variety of mathy poems. Recently, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, Carol gave a presentation entitled "Poetry of Mathematical Definitions" -- the abstract for this talk begins with this provocative sentence:
Mathematical poetry begins when worlds we consider distinct collide.
Carol's poetry-editorship for Talking Writing has led to many math-related poems being published therein. Here is a link to those poems and a bit of other math-related content; the following list includes names of writers whose work has been included there: Robin Chapman, Marion Deutsche Cohen, Allison Hedge Coke, Mary Cresswell, Catherine Daly, Carol Dorf, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Sarah Glaz, JoAnne Growney, Athena Kildegaard, Larry Lesser, Elizabeth Langosy , Marco Maisto, Alice Major, Katie Manning, Daniel May, David Morimoto, Giavanna Munafo, Karen Ohlson, Eveline Pye, Stephanie Strickland, Amy Uyematsu, Sue Brannan Walker, and Jean Wolff. Some of the poets have been featured more than once and to find all work by a particular author, SEARCH is recommended.
And here, from Talking Writing, is one of Carol Dorf's fascinating poems:
Lost Information by Carol Dorf
Visualize groups: there’s the babysitting co-op,
with slips of scrip the children color during
quarterly potlucks; and more than enough churches
each with study evenings, and fundraising committees;
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Poetry at the Mathematics Conference
Last weekend, April 6-9, was a virtual national jmm - Joint Mathematics Meetings -- and I attended a number of sessions that explored links between the focused languages of mathematics and poetry. Presenters that I was privileged to hear included Carol Dorf, Sarah Glaz, Gizem Karaali, and Dan May. Math guy Douglas Norton of Villanova University organized contributed-paper session on "Mathematics and the Arts" and also hosted a Friday-evening poetry reading -- an event in which much of the action was writing and sharing Fibs (6-line poems with syllable count being the first six Fibonacci numbers). Here are several samples:
From Doug Norton: From Dan May:
Me? Pet
Write? me
A Fib? Or I
Not a fib. will bite you.
Put my heart in it. Nighttime is here, time
Let’s just see what comes bleeding out. to burn off all that hay I ate.
From David Reimann: From Gizem Karaali:
Joint one
Math golden
Meetings dragon
Zoom with friends metallic,
poetry alive majestic creature --
breathing words across many miles . . . not sure I want to meet one now
Monday, October 5, 2020
The Domain of the Function . . .
Recently I found, in The Literary Nest, the mathy poem, "Functional" by retired math teacher and active poet Carol Dorf. Dorf's poem is a pantoum -- and the interplay of math terminology with repeated lines, gives us some new thoughts to think. Enjoy!
Functional by Carol Dorf
Fanatic is the word of the day.
The domain of the function is the set of inputs.
How did the programmer know in advance?
The range is the set of outputs.
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
TalkingWriting with Mathematics
TalkingWriting is an online journal that's celebrating its 10th birthday -- TEN YEARS of including mathematics in its mix of poetry. This mathy connection has grown strong through the poetry editorship of Carol Dorf, poet and retired math teacher. In this anniversary issue, poems are paired with works of visual art and the effect is stunning; from it, I offer below samples of poems by Amy Uyematsu and by me.
Amy Uyematsu's poem "Lunes During This Pandemic" thoughtfully applies
the counting structure of the "lune" (aka "American Haiku") with
three-line stanzas of 3/5/3 words per line.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
If a Garden of Numbers . . .
In a summer email from math-poet-editor Carol Dorf, I first enjoyed "If a Garden of Numbers" -- a mingling of numbers with the natural world -- by California poet Cole Swensen. I offer its opening lines below followed by a link to the complete poem.
If a Garden of Numbers by Cole Swenson
If a garden is the world counted
and found analogue in nature
One does not become two by ever ending
so the stairs must be uneven in number
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Wonderful math-poetry . . . in lots of online places
Every time, these days, it seems, an equation gets forced. . . .
At Poets.org, as at many poetry websites, there is an opportunity to search -- using, for example, "geometry" or "equation" -- and to find lots of poems with mathematical connections.
Carol Dorf is a retired math teacher and a wonderful poet; this link leads to poems from her published in this blog and this link leads to "Wild Equations," a collection of some the mathy poems found in TalkingWriting.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
THE STORY OF MATHEMATICS -- in a poem
The Story of Mathematics by Sarah Dickenson Snyder
It starts with a shell –
its curve and shine,
the way a line peaks.
It starts with a star
and the arc
between bone and light.
Monday, May 25, 2020
Counting . . . and more counting . . .
Information by David Ignatow
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Reaching for the stars . . . with science and poetry
a Golden Shovel for Beatrice Tinsley by Carol Dorf
For a while scientists' proposed loopholes
crossing the universe, wormholes a technique in
which to traverse distance to other worlds, this
unpleasant constraint which most reasoning
holds us to a single solar system or may
be, just perhaps a transit could exist
Monday, September 17, 2018
Time and Precision . . . .
Announce the Hour You Have Clocks For by Carol Dorf
Monday, August 28, 2017
How does the Triangle relate to the Circle?
Here, playing with mathematical language -- from Carol's 2013 collection, enchantingly illustrated by Terri Saul, Every Evening Deserves a Title (Delirious Nonce, Berkeley, CA) -- is "Euclidean Shivers."
So, how does the Triangle
relate to the Circle?
Euclid and a radius prove points
that radiate from the center, a circle,
a method to navigate space.
Friday, November 18, 2016
A well-constructed language
Mathematics is "a well-constructed language." |
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
A Fib (a perfect circle) -- and some math-po links
1 Not
1 one
2 circle
3 is perfect
5 yet the idea
8 of circle's useful every day.
The beauty of images and the ideas they represent is central in both mathematics and poetry. A wonderful resource for works that join these two is the literary website TalkingWriting,com -- whose poetry editor is Carol Dorf, also a math teacher. Here is a link to a wonderful TW essay from a few years back, "Math Girl Fights Back" by Karen J Ohlson. This article by Dorf, "Why Poets Sometimes think in Numbers," introduces a 2012 collection of mathy poems. Another collection was posted in the Spring 2016 issue. In addition, at the TalkingWriting website, you can enter the search term "math" -- as I did -- and be offered 5 pages of links to consider.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Talking-Writing offers Math Poems
Carol Dorf, poetry editor of Talking-Writing, is a math teacher as well as a poet and her work as well as those of others with math interest are explored in "Wild Equations," the Spring 2016 Issue of Talking-Writing. Here are some links:
Bays with a Stream and Another Both Flowing
All Through Them along Enfolded Paths)"
Earlier this week in an American Mathematical Society blog posting entitled "Math and Verbal Gymnastics," Duquesne University mathematician Anna Haensch also celebrated the join of mathematics and poetry.