One of the excitements I find in both mathematics and poetry is the continuing discovery of new meaning. A first reading discovers something but subsequent readings discover more and more. A poem by Kenneth Koch (1925-2002), "One Train May Hide Another," opens with "In a poem, one line may hide another line" -- focusing also on the idea that one thought may obscure another.
Koch's poem is one that I first met lots of years ago when I was working with middle school students in a poetry class at a newly established Children's Museum in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. At the time, the poem excited me by bringing back memories of traveling through western Pennsylvania as a child when my parents' car often needed to obey flashing red lights and stop while a train crossed our highway. And sometimes there were parallel sets of tracks and the possibility that two trains might be passing our intersection in opposite directions at the same time.
I offer below the opening lines of the poem and a link to the complete poem; I post it with the hope that you also will enjoy it -- and will reflect on the ways that (in mathematics and elsewhere) one idea may hide -- or lead to -- another.
Posts
