A Lecture on the Cube

     Summer weeks spent teaching English to Romanian students have helped me to learn of several of the country's fine poets and to get involved in a bit of translating.  Romanian mathematics professor, Gabriel Prajitura (now at SUNY Brockport) -- whom I first met at Pennsylvania's Bucknell University when I was teaching nearby at Bloomsburg University -- worked with me to translate several mathy poems by Nichita Stanescu (1933-1983).  The Summer/Autumn 2004 issue of Circumference:  Poetry in Translation included "A lecture on the cube" and "A lecture on the circle."  My blog posting on April 18, 2014 -- available at this link -- shares "A lecture on the circle" -- and I offer the other below:

     A lecture on the cube     by Nichita Stanescu

        You take a piece of stone,
        chisel it with blood,
        grind it with Homer’s eye,
        burnish it with beams
        until the cube comes out perfect.       

Counting on ... and on ... BLACK LIVES MATTER!

     In these days of learning to recognize the racism and racial injustice that has gone on in the United States for SO LONG I am reminded of a poem, "Learning to Count" by Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu (1933-1983) (posted at this link back in 2011), a poem that captures the horror of barbarianism.

     Learning to count     by Nichita Stanescu                   
                        
     Hairy and sweaty sit                            
     the barbarian Hittites.       
     Learning to count they pull from corpses
     fingers, legs, arms, eyes.                                    
     Oh, divided ones,    
     how bloody              
     is the idea of having ideas!  

Remembering Solomon Marcus

     Almost five years ago I received an email from Romanian mathematician Solomon Marcus in response to my posting of a translation of  a poem by Nichita Stanescu (1933-1983) entitled "Poetic Mathematics"  -- a poem that Stanescu dedicates to Marcus.  In his email, Marcus offers this:

          Nichita Stanescu published his "Poetic Mathematics" in January 1971, in the magazine ARGES, as a reply to my book "Mathematical Poetics" (in Romanian, 1970; in German in 1973, at Athenaeum Verlag, Frankfurt/Main).

Here is a link to an interview with Marcus last year (at age 90) and it tells of his ongoing literary interests.  Recently I learned the sad news of his death, last month at the age of 91.  Some interesting details of the way Marcus and Stanescu experimented with the uses of language are included in this 2008 article by Emilia Parpala and Rimona Afanaa and are illustrated in the following poem, "Ritual," in which Stanescu uses numbers to explore and extend the meaning of The Last Supper.

     Ritual     by Nichita Stanescu  (trans. Sean Cotter)

     I cry before the number five --
     the last supper, minus six.

Which hat? (from Slovenia)

     For a long time I have highly valued the work of Eastern European poets -- including Wislawa Szymborska, Miroslav Holub, Nichita Stanescu, Nina Cassian -- and have been pleased to find mathematical imagery in their work.  Early in November I had the privilege of attending a reading at the Goethe-Institut Washington that featured Slovenian poet Aleš Šteger -- born in 1973, winner of many awards, and described as the most translated Slovenian author of his generation.  A fun event -- from which I give you one of his slightly-mathematical offerings.

     Hat     by   Aleš Šteger (trans. Brian Henry)

     Who lives under the hat?
     Under the hat, which are three?
     Three hats. 

Poetry of Romania - Nora School, Apr 24

     During several summers teaching conversational English to middle-school students in Deva, Romania, I became acquainted with the work of Romanian poets.  These included:  Mikhail Eminescu (1850-1889, a Romantic poet, much loved and esteemed, honored with a portrait on Romanian currency), George Bakovia (1881-1957, a Symbolist poet, and a favorite poet of Doru Radu, an English teacher in Deva with whom I worked on some translations of Bacovia into English), Nichita Stanescu  (1933-1983, an important post-war poet, a Nobel Prize nominee -- and a poet who often used mathematical concepts and images in his verse).
     On April 24, 2014 at the Nora School here in Silver Spring I will be reading (sharing the stage with Martin Dickinson and Michele Wolf) some poems of Romania -- reading both my own writing of my Romania experiences and some translations of work by Romanian poets.     Here is a sample (translated by Gabriel Praitura and me) of  a poem by Nichita Stanescu:

Finding fault with a sphere . . .

     On November 9 I had the pleasure (hosted by Irina Mitrea and Maria Lorenz) of talking ("Thirteen Ways that Math and Poetry Connect") with the Math Club at Temple University and, on November 5, I visited Marion Cohen's "Mathematics in Literature" class at Arcadia University.  THANKS for these good times.

          This
          Fib
          poem
          says THANK-YOU
          to all those students
          from Arcadia and Temple 
          who participated in "math-poetry" with me --
          who held forth with sonnets, pantoums,
          squares, snowballs, and Fibs --
          poetry
          that rests
          on
          math.

      My Temple host, Irina Mitrea, and I share something else besides being women who love mathematics -- the Romanian poet, Nichita Stanescu (1933-83), is a favorite for both of us.  My October 23 posting ("On the Life of Ptolemy") offered one of Sean Cotter's recently published translations of poems by Stanescu and below I include more Stanescu-via-Cotter -- namely, two of the ten sections of "An Argument with Euclid."  These stanzas illustrate Stanescu at his best -- irreverently using mathematical terminology and expressing articulate anger at seen and unseen powers of oppression.

"On the Life of Ptolemy"

Poetry at its best uses words in new ways.  Mathematics sometimes does that also.  But for a poet to use mathematical terms in new ways can be risky.  Nichita Stanescu (Romania, 1933 - 1983) was a poet unafraid to take that risk.  Here is Sean Cotter's translation of Stanescu's "On the Life of Ptolemy" from the new and fine Stanescu collection, Wheel with a Single Spoke.

     On the Life of Ptolemy     by Nichita Stanescu

     Ptolemy believed in the straight line,
     It exists.
     Count its points and, if you can,
     tell me the number.

Remembering Israel Lewis Schneider

     On Monday, October 17, 2011, Israel Lewis Schneider (1924-2011) --  Silver Spring poet and mechanical engineer -- passed away.  I did not learn of this death until yesterday -- when my colleague, Sarah Glaz, let me know that an e-mail to him had bounced back and I went online searching for him.

     It has been my pleasure to get to know "Lew" (who published poetry under the name, Israel Lewis) at local poetry readings where we connected over our common interest in poetry-with-mathematics.  Lew's poem, "I Find My Faith in the Flatness of Space," appeared in the anthology Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (edited by Glaz and me) and his poem for two voices, "Cantor:  Not Eddie,"  appeared here in this blog on 24 July 2010.  Shortly after that July posting, Lew sent another poem for my review.  To celebrate the life of this kind, funny, and very talented man, I offer here that poem -- with its playful examination of mathematical and other identities -- "Who Steals My Trash . . . ":  

Mathematics in Romanian poetry

     When I first visited Romania, I met Doru Radu, then a teacher of English at Scoala Generala "Andre Muresanu" in Deva. And Doru introduced me to his favorite poet, George Bacovia (1881 - 1957). Over time, we together translated many of Bacovia's poems -- and the bilingual collection plumb de iarnă / lead of winter was published in 2002 (Ed., Gabriel Stanescu, Criterion Publishing). Recently I scrutinized that collection (no longer available in print, but here, online) to look for mathematical lines to post in this blog. Alas, Bacovia offers no more than a couple images from geometry: "alone in deserted squares" (in Pălind / Fading) and "the wide, oval mirror, framed with silver" (in Poemă în oglindă / Poem in the Mirror).
     Although Bacovia did not use mathematical imagery, a considerable number of Romanian poets do, and below I offer links to my earlier blog postings of work by Ion Barbu, Nina Cassian, Martin Sorescu, and Nichita Stanescu. Enjoy!  

Learning to count

The childhood of Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu (1933-1983) took place during World War II and his teen years during his country's adjustment to a new Communist system; his dark images are drawn from a culture largely unknown to the outside world.  Often, however, he utilized mathematical imagery or terminology; here is his "Learning to count." 

Stanescu - poetic mathematics

Today I found a link to a recent article, "Matematica şi poezia," that considers commonalities among the arts and mathematics and, therein, mentions a poem by Nichita Stanescu (1933-1984) which Gabriel Prajitura and I have translated.  The poem, "Poetic Mathematics," is dedicated to Romanian mathematician Solomon Marcus.  Here is Gabi's and my translation: 

Mathematics in poetry by Nichita Stanescu

     Though formerly a math professor, my recent teaching has involved poetry--and I have been fortunate to spend several summer months at Scoala Andrei Muresanu in Deva, Romania, teaching poetry and conversational English.