One of my favorite websites to visit is "Poetry and Mathematics" -- a blog from poet Marian Christie. Today I focus on her posting of poems with word-lengths structured by Pascal's Triangle; here is a sample:
Poet Marian Christie's blog, Poetry and Mathematics -- found at https://marianchristiepoetry.net/ -- is a website I much enjoy visiting; there I learn many many new things. (Here is a link that leads to a list of my previous postings that feature Christie and her work.)
The idea that the shape of a poem may be part of its message is not new -- but Christie has brought more than line-length and syllable-count into the picture and today I focus on her Circular Poems.
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| A Circular poem by Marian Christie |
One of my favorite websites to visit is this varied and thoughtful "Poetry and Mathematics" collection of postings by Marian Christie.
Throughout history, people who write poems have often been aided by constraints. When we sit down to write, writing the words that first occur to us -- then shaping the word into extended meanings but following a pattern of rhythm or rhyme or word-count . . . or . . . . For many poets the sonnet, for example, has been a poetic structure that shapes thoughts into special arrangements of words.
In long-ago days, when print and screen versions of poems were not easily available, rhyme schemes were an important aid -- helping one's memory to keep a poem in one's head. Now, aided by widely available print and online visibility, poetry has moved into new forms -- including a variety of visual arrangements.
In several previous postings (collected at this link) this blog has considered the poetry form called a sestina: a sestina has 39 lines and its form depends on 6 words -- arrangements of which are the end-words of 6 6-line stanzas; these same words also appear, 2 per line, in the final 3-line stanza.
Structural constraints often govern the patterns we find in poetry -- well-known in poetic history are rhythm-and-rhyme patterns including the sonnet and the villanelle and the limerick, and the syllable-counting pattern of some Haiku. Because many poems were shared orally, rather than in writing, patterns of counting and sound helped to ease the challenges of remembering.
For me a wonderful source for learning about new poetic forms is the blog of poet Marian Christie -- a writer and scholar, born in Zimbawe and now living in England , who has studied and taught both mathematics and poetry. In her very fine blog, Poetry and Mathematics, found here, Christie explores many of the influences that mathematics can have on poetry -- including, here in a recent posting, some effects transmitted by the SHAPE of a poem.
Writer and scholar Marian Christie (born in Zimbabwe and now in Kent, England) has had a long term interest in mathematics and poetry and, during the last several years, she has created a blog -- Poetry and Mathematics -- in which she explores, with careful detail, some interesting and important links between these two arts.
Christie's work has been featured several times in this blog and my posting today shows my attempt to learn from one of her postings. At this link, on July 13, 2022, Christie posted "Turning in Circles -- the Tritina" and I have used her posting to learn the requirements for a tritina and, then, to try to write one.
A tritina consists of ten lines -- three three-line stanzas with a final, separate line. The stanzas have the same three end-words, rotated in the sequence 123, 312, 231, and a single final line containing all three end-words.
I have tried to write a tritina and offer my example below -- not because it is good but because it explores a pattern that I think might work well for students trying to write a poem in a math class.
ARE THINGS DIFFERENT NOW IN SCHOOL? a sample tritina
When you pick up something to read -- a newspaper article, instructions for a new appliance, or a poem, or whatever -- in what order do you read it? For many of us, reading is not a beginning-to-end process but a jumping around in which we survey the scope of what's to be read, look for internal highlights, focus on particular terms, etc. A fascinating exploration of multiple ways of reading a particular poem is a treasure I have found in a blog that I visit often, Poetry and Mathematics by Marian Christie.
Born in Zimbabwe and now living in the UK, mathy poet Marian Christie offers a delightful and informative blog that thoughtfully explores various ways in which the arts of mathematics and poetry are linked. In this January, 2022 blog posting Christie examines what she calls a "multiple choice" poem -- that is a poem that offers multiple ways of reading what the page presents. The poem she considers is one written in 1597 by Henry Lok in honor of Elizabeth I; below I offer a diagram of that poem, copied from Christie's blog.
On Twitter, I have seen frequent posts by UK-based writer Anthony Etherin -- and, encouraged by mathy poet Marian Christie, I have found it interesting to explore his work. Etherin focuses on constrained, formal, visual, and experimental poetry -- he tweets @Anthony_Etherin; he manages Penteract Press. AND Etherin has invented a new type of writing-constraint called the aelindrome -- a bit like the palindrome ( such as top spot or never odd or even ) except that the reversals involve more than one letter. Here is a simple example of an aelindrome:
melody, a bloody elm which can be divided into m el ody ablo ody el m
Moonless Moonlight by Anthony Etherin
Low, fatal nights! Late, moonless.... Tense, we glitch.
We swim bled sky, along the ashy glow.
Shy glow along the ambled sky, we switch.
We glisten -- see slate moonlight's natal flow.
Go here to learn more of Anthony Etherin and his work.
Recently I have come to know another strong advocate of math-poetry connections. Marian Christie (read about her here) has had longtime interest in both mathematics and poetry and her blog -- available at https://marianchristiepoetry.net/ -- explores topics that include "Poetry and Fractals," "Poetry and Number Sequences," "Poetry and Permutations," . . . reflection symmetry and square poems and Fibonacci poems . . .. and lots more. Allow yourself time to explore when you visit https://marianchristiepoetry.net/.
When I am working with a group of students are nervous about their ability to write a poem, I often start by asking them to write a Fib, because it starts with single syllables, In her posting about Fibonacci poems, Christie offers this simple example of how the Fib structure can lead you to a poem.
I
like
playing
with patterns
in crochet, music,
poetry and mathematics.
If you are new to Fibs, try this CHALLENGE: using the same first two lines as Christie used above, create a Fibonacci poem. And then another ... and another.
During recent days, one of my special enjoyments has been finding time to read Marian Christie's blog -- a delightful collection of poetry and poetic musings with frequent connections to mathematics. Christie's biographical sketch (available here) indicates that she, like me, grew up enjoying both poetry and math. She became a math teacher and, after her years of teaching ended, she turned her attention to poetry. Below I present a sample of her mathy poetry, followed by links to several of her postings.
Today, in a season that is approaching summer, I coolly offer Christie's "Midwinter" poem (found here in her blog) -- a stanza in which the poet uses Pascal's triangle to pattern her words:
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| a Pascal-triangle poem -- find it and lots of other mathy poems here. |
Here, next, are links to several of Christie's math-poetry blog postings. ENJOY!
Recently released, Issue 1 of Volume 11 (2021) of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics; in it Editors Mark Huber and Gizem Karaali have collected for us a wonderful selection of articles -- including a work of fiction, a folder of teaching limericks, and the following very fine (and mathy) poems:
"Early Morning Mathematics Classes" by Angelina Schenck
"Proof Theory" by Stan Raatz
"One Straight Line Addresses Another Traveling in the Same Direction
on an Infinite Plane" by Daniel W. Galef
"Turing's Machine" by Mike Curtis
"Iterations of Emptying" by Marian Christie
Go here to JHM Volume 11 to explore, to enjoy!
When writing a poem on a topic about which I feel strongly, I often like to use constraints -- such as patterns of syllable-counts or rhymes -- to help me to process my ideas carefully. A recent post by mathematician-poet Marian Christie does a delightful job of showing how the square can be used to shape very fine poems. Here is a link to Christie's post, "Mathematical forms in poetry: Square poems" -- a posting which includes examples of acrostic poems and grid poems, palindromes, Latin squares and visual poetry.
Below I offer one of Christie's own poems, "Earth Geometry" -- a poem that involves the square and the cube in its structure and thereby relates to ancient theories of matter and to a more current belief that the cube is a basic structure of the earth. (View Christie's full explanation here.)
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| "Crochet" -- a FIB by Marian Christie |
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