Poetry-with-math in Baltimore -- 17 Jan 2014

At the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore (January 15-18, 2014), the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (under the leadership of editors Mark Huber and Gizem Karaali) will sponsor a poetry reading.  Mark your calendar now! (And be sure to scroll down past the reading announcement to poems from last year's JHM reading in San Diego by poets Katie Manning and Karen Morgan Ivy.)

 Friday,  January 17, 2014. 4:30 - 6:30 PM

 Room 308  Baltimore Convention Center  

Cities of Mathematics

Judith Johnson's multi-part poem, "Cities of Mathematics and Desire" is geometric in its descriptive power; scenes are constructed and mapped with the careful attention of a mathematical proof.  At a math-poetry reading a year ago today (January 6, 2012) at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston, Johnson read part 4 of this poem -- and it is included here in the July 2012 issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.   Read on for part 2 of this 9-part poem:

2.  Of the Power of Chess to Feed the Starved     by Judith Johnson

Imagine new numbers

     As a child I wrote poems but abandoned the craft until many years later when I was a math professor; at that later time some of my poems related to ideas pertinent to my classroom.  For Number Theory classes "A Mathematician's Nightmare" gave a story to the unsolved Collatz conjecture; in Abstract Algebra "My Dance Is Mathematics" gave the mathematical history a human component.  
     My editor-colleague (Strange Attractors), Sarah Glaz, also has used poems for teaching --  for example, "The enigmatic number e."  And Marion Cohen brings many poems of her own and others into her college seminar course, "Truth & Beauty: Mathematics in Literature."  Add a west-coaster to these east-coast poet-teachers -- this time a California-based contributor: teacher, poet, and blogger (Math Mama Writes) Sue VanHattum.  VanHattum (or "Math Mama") is a community college math teacher interested in all levels of math learning.  Some of her own poems and selections from other mathy poets are available at the Wikispace, MathPoetry, that she started and maintains. Here is the poet's recent revision of a poem from that site, a poem about the invention (or discovery?) of imaginary numbers.

Imaginary Numbers Do the Trick      by Sue VanHattum    

Seeking math-poets -- JMM, SanDiego 1-11-13

Call for Readers:
     The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics will host a reading of poetry-with-mathematics at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) on Friday, January 11, 5 - 7 PM in Room 3, Upper Level, San Diego Convention Center.  If you wish to attend the reading and participate, please send,  by December 1, 2012 (via e-mail, to Gizem Karaali (gizem.karaali@pomona.edu)) up to 3 poems that involve mathematics (in content or structure, or both) -- no more than 3 pages -- and a 25 word bio.

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. 

Poetry heard at JMM

In Boston on Friday evening, January 6, at the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meetings, these folks gathered and read -- for a delighted audience in Room 312 of Hynes Convention Center -- some poems of mathematics.
     Poets who submitted work in advance and were on the "Poetry with Mathematics" program included:
          Jacqueline Lapidus, Judith Johnson, Rosanna Iembo (accompanied by the violin of her daughter Irene Iaccarino), Charlotte Henderson, Carol Dorf (read by Elizabeth Langosy), Sandra Coleman, Marion Cohen, Tatiana Bonch (read by John Hiigli), Harry Baker (via video presented by reading organizer Gizem Karaali -- an editor of the online Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, which sponsored the the reading), and JoAnne Growney (also an organizer of the reading).
     Participants during an "open reading" included: 
          Mary Buchinger, Chris Caragianis, Rip Coleman, Seth Goldberg, Joshua Holden, Ann Perbohner, Pedro Poitevin, and Jason Samuels.

Good numbers . . .

     My wish for the New Year 2012 is that you will have good numbers -- that your happiness will have high peaks, that your sadness and grief will weigh no more than you can bear.
     In the spirit of assessment and introspection that captures many of us at year-end, I offer a small poem, "Good Fortune" -- one that I wrote in late December ten years ago when I was, as I am now, taking stock. "Good Fortune" appeared in my 2006 chapbook, My Dance Is Mathematics (Paper Kite Press -- available online here). Another tiny poem, a more recent one, "14 Syllables" -- from Red Has No Reason (Plain View Press, 2010) -- continues the focus on assessment using numbers. 

Four colors will do

     As I work with Gizem Karaali, an editor of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, to plan a reading of mathematical poetry at the JMM (Joint Mathematics Meetings) in Boston on 6 January 2012, my thoughts return to a poetry reading that I helped to organize at JMM in Baltimore in 1992. One of the participants was a friend and former colleague, Frank Bernhart, whose work is guided by the rhythm pattern of a well-known song.
     Bernhart is an expert on the Four-Color Theorem and his poem celebrates its history -- including consideration of its proof (in 1976) by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken. (The theorem asserts that any map drawn on a flat surface or on a sphere requires only 4 colors to ensure that no regions sharing a boundary segment have the same color.)

Poetry at JMM -- in Boston 6-Jan-2012

Call for Submissions:
     The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics will host a reading of poetry-with-mathematics on Friday, January 6, 5-7 PM in Boston’s Hynes Convention Center at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings. Reading organizers include JHM editors, Gizem Karaali and Mark Huber, and poetry-math blogger, JoAnne Growney.  Although the reading is open to all, without pre-selected readers, we will prepare a written program of poets who submit their work by our December 1 deadline. Both mathematician-poets and others who use mathematics in their poems are invited to submit.

Cantor Ternary Set

The second issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics has recently been posted -- with more new poems.  The first issue contained a poem by Philip Holmes about one of the most amazing collections of numbers in all of mathematics, the  Cantor Ternary Set.  This set, discovered by Henry John Stephen Smith (1826-1883) but popularized by Georg Cantor (1845-1918) consists of all the real numbers whose base 3 or ternary representations involve only the digits 0 and 2. Like a fishing net, the Cantor Ternary Set is mostly holes. "Gaps" by Philip Holmes spreads it out before us -- and reflects on what else it may represent:

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics -- V1, Issue 1

A new door has opened for those of us interested in the humanistic aspects of mathematics.  Under the able leadership of editors Mark Huber (Claremont McKenna College) and Gizem Karaali (Pomona College), the idea of the former Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal has been revived and Volume 1 Issue 1 of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics is now available online.  The inaugural issue contains several poems, including the following one by Caleb Emmons, "Seeing Pine Trees,"  in which Emmons characterizes the views of a poet and a mathematician as two halves of one whole. 

Dividing by Zero

Fairy godmothers have their magic wands and mathematician have division by zero as a way to make the impossible happen -- for example, we can show that 2 equals 3: