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.
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