Squaring the Circle -- from the POETRY App

     One of my smart-phone delights is the App (available from PoetryFoundation.org) that gives me a selection of poems on the go. (My posting for 15 October 2015 gives a description of how the App works.)  A few days ago, spinning its dials -- matching the categories "Humor," "& Arts and Sciences"-- I found the exceptional poem "Squaring the Circle" in which poet Philip Fried has some fun with the impossible problem.   ("Squaring the Circle" first appeared in the July /August 2014 issue of Poetry and Fried has given me permission to include it here.)

Squaring the Circle      by Philip Fried

It’s a little-known fact that God’s headgear — 
A magician’s collapsible silk top hat,
When viewed from Earth, from the bottom up — 
Is, sub specie aeternitatis,   

Use a phone App to find mathy poems

A day late, Happy Birthday, E. E. Cummings 

(b 14 October 1894, d 3 September 1962).

     One of my favorite poetry sites is PoetryFoundation.org -- publisher of POETRY Magazine and supplier of a wonderful phone app (also entitled POETRY).  The app offers access to an enormous data-base of poems, sorted into categories that may be accessed using a SPIN feature, activated by touch.  Spinning the upper layer of categories can lead to "Humor" or "Joy" or "Insecurity" or  . . ..  Spinning the lower layer of categories can lead to "& Life" or  "& Nature" or . . . . When my spin picked the match of "Humor" and "& Arts and Sciences" I found a list of 263 poems.  One was Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky."  I also found the tiny poem "Nothing"  by Ken Mikolowski that plays with meaning as mathematicians also love to do.