MAA Math Values Blog values poetry!

     I am a long-time member of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) -- an organization (with administrative offices in Washington, DC)  whose mission is "to advance the understanding of mathematics and its impact on our world."   The MAA website states:

Our members include university, college, middle, and high school mathematics faculty; graduate and undergraduate students; pure and applied mathematicians; computer scientists; statisticians; and many others in government, business, and industry. We welcome all who are interested in the mathematical sciences.

     An important feature on the MAA website is their Math Values blog -- which has frequent postings from diverse voices within mathematics; these postings include important mathematical information and also math's connections to the larger world -- including teaching and learning, the arts, practical math-applications  . . .and more . . . 

     Recently in the Math Values blog I came across this posting (from June 2023) by Czech poet and artist Radoslav Rochallyi of what he calls VECTOR poetry; here is a screen-shot of a sample -- a poem developed from the phrase: “Time is pouring out of my broken watch glass. You look ahead, and you're right. Because the potential of the past is just … a sandcastle.”

Is a proof the opposite of a poem?

      One of the valuable online sources from the MAA (Mathematical Association of America) is the Math Values blog -- found at this link -- a blog that explores COMMUNICATION, COMMUNITY, INCLUSIVITY, and TEACHING and LEARNING.  Using the SEARCH feature, I entered "poetry" and found this variety of resources -- including mention of the Steven Strogatz Prize for Math Communication -- SHARE YOUR LOVE OF MATH WITH THE WORLD -- a contest for high school students with deadline April 28, 2023.  Entry categories include Art, Audio, Performance, Social Media, Video, and Writing.  Guidelines are available here.

     Back in June, 2021 at this link I shared a portion of the poem by Julia Schanen that won in the Writing category that year.  It's second line is the title of this blog posting -- and the complete poem is available here.  A 2022 Strogatz winner was Wyeth Renwick -- and this blog posting features his poem.

     I close with two of my favorite lines of poetry:

        The Secret Sits     by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

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

Equation Poetry

     The term "Equation Poetry" is the title of an article by Radoslav Rochallyi  -- and posted on 11/9/ 2021 here in the MATH VALUES blog.  Rochallyi is a poet, essayist, and interdisciplinary artist living in Prague, Czech Republic and author of eight books of poetry.   For Rochallyi, "mathematical" poetry is not poetry about mathematics but poetry whose form is determined by a mathematical rule. 

     For example, he uses the formula for the area of a circle --  a = π r²  --  to form this example of Equation poetry:

     And, from the binomial formula,    

 

if we let x = time, a = being, n = now, and k = know -- our binomial formula becomes this poem:

 

 

Visit Rochallyi's article at this link to learn lots more.