Showing posts with label Oberlin College Press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oberlin College Press. Show all posts

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Counting on things -- a prose poem

Russell Edson is one of the contemporary masters of the prose poem (a poem whose words are organized into paragraphs rather than stanzas). A selection from May Swenson's prose poem (and short novel) "Giraffe" is available in the October 19 blog posting. Here is Edson's poem "One Two Three, One Two Three" -- which considers the secrets hidden inside one's head.  Another mind, even that of one of our children, is a mystery incompletely known to any of us.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Spacetime

   Spacetime     by Miroslav Holub (1932-1998)

   When I grow up and you get small,
   then --

Thursday, August 19, 2010

From Miroslav Holub -- a reflection on accuracy

In applications of mathematics, as in other scientific research, it is important to distinguish between the precision of measurements (how closely they agree with each other) and their accuracy (how closely measured values agree with the correct value).  One of my favorite poets, Miroslav Holub (1923-98), also a research scientist (immunologist), has captured this dilemma with irony in his "Brief Reflection on Accuracy," translated from Czech by Ewald Osers.