Honor World Poetry Day on 3/21 with a Math Poem

On March 21 each year, UNESCO World Poetry Day! 

Browsing down through this blog will lead you to lots of poems to read to celebrate that special day. In addition, here's something new -- I offer below part of a fine poem that I recently found again in an old collection, Verse and Universe, (Edited by Kurt Brown, Milkweed Editions, 1998). 

from     Reasons for Numbers     by Lisel Mueller (1924-2020)

          1
          Because I exist

          2
          Because there must be a reason
          why I should cast a shadow

          3
          So that good can try to be better
          and become best
          and beginning grow into middle and end 

Earthquake and Hurricane

It would not be easy to argue that a poem whose numbers merely identify its stanzas is "mathematical" but "Curriculum Vitae," found at poets.org and written by Pullitzer Prize winning poet Lisel Mueller, also contains the words "earthquake" and "hurricane" and thereby is significant on this Saturday in Silver Spring -- five days after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake damaged both the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral and on the very day that millions of us are watching the progress of Hurricane Irene as it storms north along the eastern coast of the US. In acknowledgment of these days, I invite you to read this fine poem: