Showing posts with label Donald Illich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Illich. Show all posts

Monday, July 7, 2025

Mathematics linked to Water

      I was captivated by the title -- "He's Not a Poet, But He Plays One" -- of a poem (found here) by Donald Illich -- and it led me to want to explore this poet's writing.  Sometimes he uses mathematics -- not in major thematic ways but in very interesting ways.  Below I offer a poem that illustrates my view.

       Water Mathematics       by Donald Illich

             During the ocean we timed our lake,
             calculated the river and the stream,

             modeled the pond under dangerous 
             situations.  Water was really math,

Monday, April 28, 2025

What America Looks Like -- a poetry-photo

     Recent Presidential misstatements and distortions of American politics and policies are disturbing -- and I have pulled from my shelf a literary anthology This Is What America Looks Like. published in 2021 by the Washington Writers Publishing House and containing fiction and poetry from writers in DC, Maryland, and Virginia.  (Purchase is available at amazon.com.)  In this collection I found, in the poem "D.C." by Donald Illich, the phrase "here, where presidents lied" -- and since the poem contains a couple of quantitative words, I offer it below:

     D.C.     by Donald Illich  

             I'd never seen rats
             crawl down city streets
             until I came here,
             where presidents lied,