Three Plus Four Divided by Seven

     A good friend, Doru Radu -- with whom I have partnered to translate some Romanian poetry into English -- shares with me a love for the work of Polish poet and 1996 Nobelist, Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012).  Doru lives in Poland now and had a chance to meet Szymborska, to hear her read, and to translate some of her work into his native Romanian. And last summer, when he traveled to New York, he brought to me a copy of the posthumously published collection, Enough (Wydawnictwo a5).  Here are a couple of mathy stanzas from one of its poems, "Confessions of a Reading Machine."

Confessions of a Reading Machine     by Wisława Szymborska 

 translated by Clare Cavanagh

I, Number Three Plus Four Divided by Seven,
am renowned for my vast linguistic knowledge.
I now recognize thousands of languages
employed by extinct people
in their histories.  

Continue to celebrate Szymborska

If you are a frequent visitor to this blog, you know that Polish Nobelist (1996) Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) is one of my favorite poets.  My Romanian friend Doru Radu, who now lives in Poland, visited New York recently and during my visit with him there he surprised me with a gift -- a posthumous bilingual Szymborska collection, Enough (Wydawnictwo a5, translated by Clare Cavanagh).  Here is the English version of a small poem with numbers from that collection:

          Hand     

          Twenty seven bones,
          thirty five muscles,
          around two thousand nerve cells
          in every tip of all five fingers.
          It's more than enough
          to write "Mein Kampf"
          or "Pooh Corner."

Links to additional postings of Szymborska's work may be found here.
Remember also to visit the wonderful Spring 2016 issue of TalkingWriting -- with its smorgasbord of mathy poems.

Opposites, Balance

     Recently, and perhaps always, opposites have interested me.  For example, the complementary and sometimes  conflicting nuggets of advice contained in "Pinch a penny, waste a pound" and "It is best to prepare for the days of necessity."   And in  "Kindness effects more than severity" and "Spare the rod, spoil the child."   Maybe what I like best is the challenge of synthesizing opposite truths.
     Mathematics contains many pairs of entities that are, each in some different sense, opposites:

2 and -2      2 and 1/2

horizontal and vertical   differentiation and integration

And there are some arbitrary subdivisions that often are treated as if they are disconnected opposites:

pure vs. applied (creating mathematics vs. solving problems)

teaching and learning, creating vs. teaching, arts and sciences

In an ideal world, opposites exist with "Balance" -- which is the title of the following lovely and contemplative poem by Adam Zagajewski :