Poetry and Math -- online audio -- 2020 census, etc

     Today (with poems in our pockets) we celebrate the final day of National Poetry Month and National Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month and I offer to you two math-poetry links to browse and enjoy.
     This first link leads to an NPR Code Switch podcast that concerns the 2020 census -- "When Poets Decide Who Counts" -- and five poets-and-poems are presented in a discussion of the fairness/unfairness of the census-count.  (One of the poems, "American Arithmetic" by Natalie Diaz, has also appeared in this blog.)
     This next link leads to another podcast  -- this one entitled "What's math got to do with poetry?" and a creation of science writer Stephen Ornes, in his blog, Calculated.  (Thank you, Stephen, for inviting me to participate in your podcast and to read several poems.)

Upcoming in Washington -- National Book Festival

     The BOOK WORLD section of this past weekend's Washington POST offers the program for The Library of Congress National Book Festival that will occur next Saturday, September 1, 2018 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.  The festival has a Poetry Stage and two of the poets who will appear have been featured in past postings in this blog.  The posting on August 2, 2018 featured "American Arithmetic" by Natalie Diaz and back on June 14, 2017 was posted a section of "Life on Mars" by Tracy K. Smith.  (Smith is Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress, currently in her second term in that position.)
     Numbers can be powerful in describing hardships of poverty -- as in this stanza from "Theft" -- a poem that appears (pages 57-62) in Tracy Smith's collection duende (Graywolf Press, 2007).

from Theft     by Tracy K. Smith

American Arithmetic

     Last Monday -- with visiting friends (Janet and Terry) from Pennsylvania -- I again visited the National Museum of the American Indian and this visit, rather than focusing on the contributions of a particular native culture, seemed to draw me to exhibits focused on numbers -- most notably on the figures related to Cherokee relocation via the Trail of Tears.  This visit to the museum also allowed me to discover that a variety of books are for sale in the museum's second-floor gift shop and I found this collection of poetry which I have begun to read and love:

New Poets of Native Nations

Edited by Heid E Erdrich (Graywolf Press, 2018)

   
Within the collection, the poem "American Arithmetic" by Mojave poet Natalie Diaz quickly caught my eye -- and she has given me permission to offer it here:

       American Arithmetic     by Natalie Diaz
     
       Native Americans make up less than
       one percent of the population of America.
       0.8 percent of 100 percent.

       O, mine efficient country.