Poetry of Mathematics--David Eugene Smith, 1926

      Recently poetry-fan and occasional versifier Greg Coxson, a Research Engineer in the Department  Electrical and Computer Engineering at the US Naval Academy, sent me a link to an essay by mathematician and teacher David Eugene Smith (1869-1944) -- published in The Mathematics Teacher in 1926 and entitled THE POETRY OF MATHEMATICS.  Greg has been, over the years of this blog, a valuable contributor of information about mathy poems and poets -- and some poetry of his own.

     Early in the essay, Smith quotes Thoreau:

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung.  The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.  The most distinct and beautiful statements of any truth must take at last the mathematical form. 

     Lots of quotes and viewpoints are offered in Smith's essay and, at the end he speaks of the role of teachers " . . .  mathematics may become and does become poetry in the enthusiasm of an inspired and an inspiring teacher."

The Secret Sits     by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

               We dance round in a ring and suppose,
               But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

Lots more of Frost's words are available here.

Dinner at a Math Conference . . .

     A strong advocates of humanistic mathematics -- supporting links between mathematics and the arts -- is Greg Coxson, both a poetry fan and a Research Engineer in the Department  Electrical and Computer Engineering at the US Naval Academy.  Greg has been, over the years of this blog, a valuable contributor of information about mathy poems and poets.  Recently Greg has turned his hand to some poetry of his own -- and he has sent me this:

Crawfish Dinner at a Computational Theory Conference 

by Greg Coxson

In this drama, the crawfish come off the best
   Offered by our host as a gift of local color,
They look up innocently from their pile,
   Radiant in their trim carmine carapaces.

Next, there are the computational theorists
   Many of them from a more formal continent
Some are my heroes I am seeing up-close now,
   Not from photos at the end of reference sections.   

Clear the head for best thinking by walking

     An engineer -- and friend -- who is a long-time supporter of the STEM to STEAM program is US Naval Academy Professor Greg Coxson.  Although a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Coxson has a strong interest in the arts.  He reads widely and has suggested a number of poems  for this blog.  Recently his recommendation was "Solvitur Ambulando" by Billy Collins, a poem found on pages 92-93 of the collection The Rain in Portugal (Random House, 2016).   Below I offer the opening stanza and the final, mathematical, portion of Collins' fine poem.  (Go to the book and read more!)

from   Solvitur Ambulando    "It is solved by walking."     by Billy Collins

       I sometimes wonder about the thoughtful Roman
       who came up with the notion
       that any problem can be solved by walking.
. . .  

Poetry by Victorian Scientists

     Thanks to Greg Coxson who has recently alerted me to this 2011 article by Paul Collins in New Scientist, "Rhyme and reason: The Victorian poet scientists."  In the article, Collins is reviewing an anthology edited by Daniel Brown entitled The Poetry of Victorian Scientists: Style, Science and Nonsense (Cambridge University Press, Reprint-2015).
     The article has links to poetry by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), William J. Macquorn Rankine (1820-1872), and James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897).  Below I offer two of the eight entertaining stanzas from Rankine's poem, "The Mathematician in Love." (This poem and Maxwell's "A Lecture on Thomson's Galvanometer" also appear in the wonderful anthology that Sarah Glaz and I edited -- Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters/CRC Press, 2008, now available as an e-book.)

from  The Mathematician in Love     by William J Macquorn Rankine  

From a math-friend and an Ohio poet

     One of the wonderful things about writing a blog about my paired passions of poetry and mathematics is that the blog connects me with fascinating and generous people whom I might not otherwise meet. One of these is Marylander Greg Coxson -- physicist, engineer, mathematician, Operations Researcher -- who took three years of Latin in high school and loves words.  With interests in art and poetry, Greg has organized exhibits of math-related art -- and is a regular recommender of mathy poems for this blog.
     A week or so ago Greg alerted me to an NPR interview with Ohio Poet Laureate Amit Majmudar (a radiologist as well as a poet) -- letting me know that Majmudar's poetry was rich with mathematical imagery.  Following Greg's lead, I found Majmudar's website and was able to contact both Majmudar and his publisher, Knopf, for permission to offer these mathematical poems.
     Here, from Amit Majmudar's new book Dothead, are two sections of the poem "Logomachia" -- sections alive with geometry and logic.  The first, "radiology," is visually vivid; the second, "the waltz of descartes and mohammed," is a sestina that plays with the logic of word-order.  

A Man-Made Universe and "found" poems

 Some poems are found rather than crafted.
It's such fun -- can happen to anyone -- 
to be reading along and find a poem. 

     This post continues (from the June 4 posting) consideration of lines that were not initially written as poetry but have been later discovered to have the desirable characteristics of a poem.
     In an early-April posting I offered a poem-in-a-photo, a poem created of book spines -- and the bottom book in my pile of six is Mathematics, the Man-Made Universe:  an Introduction to the Spirit of Mathematics by Sherman K Stein (Third Edition, Freeman, 1976).  Reprinted in 2010 in paperback format, Stein's textbook -- for a "general reader," a curious person who is not a mathematician -- has been on my shelf for many years and, though I never taught from it, I have enjoyed it and shared it with friends (and I love its title). Recently, in the opening paragraph of Stein's Chapter 19 (page 471), I found a poem:

Puzzle poems from Benjamin Banneker

Benjamin Banneker (1731 - 1806) was a free African American mathematician and almanac author -- also an astronomer, surveyor, and farmer. (I learned of his work through my friend Greg Coxson, an engineer, teacher, and fan of mathematical poetry -- and Coxson learned of Banneker through a school project of his son.)  Beyond building a wooden clock and helping to lay out the borders of Washington, DC, Banneker predicted the 1789 solar eclipse and included rhyming math puzzles in his almanac.  Coxson introduced me to a fine website, established by by John F. Mahoney of Washington, DC's Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, entitled The Mathematical Puzzles of Benjamin Banneker.
     Banneker's Almanack had an eclectic mix of astronomy/astrology, medical advice, weather prediction, and other things.  Here's a math-problem-poem from that Almanack -- found, along with others, at Mahoney's site: 

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. 

More statistics -- from Hiawatha

As the author of this poem owes a debt to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I too owe Greg Coxson -- who showed the poem to me.

Hiawatha Designs an Experiment   by Maurice Kendall

Hiawatha, mighty hunter
He could shoot ten arrows upwards
Shoot them with such strength and swiftness
That the last had left the bowstring
Ere the first to earth descended.
This was commonly regarded
As a feat of skill and cunning.

Perfect as soap bubbles

An alert to today's poem came from Greg Coxson, a University of Wisconsin-educated, Silver Spring-based, radar engineer who loves mathematics and poetry.  The poem is by Howard Nemerov  (1920-1991) and it builds to a presentation of its perfect mathematical image near its end.  

Puzzles, puzzlers, and parody

     For lots of fun, go to plus online magazine at this link to find a poem that requires a knight's tour of a chess board for you to unscramble its words and read its eight lines.