Recently my poet-friend, Millicent Borges Accardi, sent me a copy of her latest book, Only More So (Salmon Poetry, 2016). She mentioned a poem entitled "The Night of Broken Glass" for its mathematics -- indeed it includes several numbers as it movingly describes attempts at normalcy amid the horrors of urban attack; and it ends with this stanza :
The essential business of living well
Continues in shock waves
That fall into the ground of innocent
People, triggered inside a soul
Of nothingness that pretended
To solve an impossible equation.
My favorite poem in Accardi's collection is "Amazing Grace" which I give you below. It is a poem that, like an intriguing piece of mathematics, I have read, and read again, and again . .. each time getting more meaning than the time before.
For me, one of the similarities of poetry and math is their density, the need for several readings -- for reading both aloud and silently, for reading with pencil and paper for note-taking, for reading in the library and at the kitchen table, sitting or standing.
Showing posts with label Millicent Borges Accardi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Millicent Borges Accardi. Show all posts
Monday, February 13, 2017
Monday, January 23, 2012
Counting fingers and blackbirds
Love of numbers is common in childhood -- and traditional nursery rhymes offer chances to know numbers as playmates and friends. "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie . . . The king was in his counting house . . ." and so on. In "The Story of the Ten Blackbirds" poet Millicent Accardi combines a portrait of an amazing story-telling aunt with a collage of childhood memories, counted and remembered.
The Story of the Ten Blackbirds by Millicent Borges Accardi
Blended at times into
The three little pigs
Or the Catholic Saints.
The Story of the Ten Blackbirds by Millicent Borges Accardi
Blended at times into
The three little pigs
Or the Catholic Saints.
Labels:
blackbirds,
counting,
Millicent Borges Accardi,
poetry,
ten
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)