The Thirst to Know HOW MANY?

    One of the important math-poetry projects that I have been involved in is Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics, a poetry anthology collected and edited by mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz and me -- published by AK Peters/CRC Press in 2008 and now available on Kindle and at various online used-book sites.

     A poem in Strange Attractors that I have been drawn to again recently is "Ode to Numbers" by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973).  Here are its opening lines: 

from  Ode to Numbers     by Pablo Neruda

          Oh, the thirst to know
          how many!
          The hunger
          to know
          how many
          stars in the sky!   

Focus on FOUR

     Numerous poems by Canadian poet Alice Major connect to science and mathematics, and Major has connected me with Ottawa poet and mechanical engineer Sneha Madhavan-Reese -- who has shared with me not only poetry but also the new-to-me fact that her home city of  Ottawa lies on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation.  Here is Madhavan-Reese's poem, "Four," a thoughtful reminder of the vast versatility of mathematical notions.
   

       Four     by Sneha Madhavan-Reese

               Is 4 the same 4 for everybody? -- Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions

       My mother draws her four with a right angle;

       my father's is pointed on top.  My daughter's four,

       half the time, is backwards.  Her sister signs,

       tucking a thumb into her raised palm.   

Math and poetry in film

     One of my delights in the last year has been viewing films about poets and mathematicians.   First, "The Man Who Knew Infinity" -- about the mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) and, more recently "Neruda" about the Chilean politician  and poet, Pablo Neruda. And also, the film "Paterson" -- about a bus-driver poet named Paterson in the city of Paterson, NJ -- a city well-known for its earlier poet, William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) who immortalized his hometown in his very long poem, "Paterson."

Here is a link to my earlier posting of a poem by Jonathan Holden, "Ramanaujan."

     I have included elsewhere in this blog several poems by Pablo Neruda 

and offer links here:  "28325674549,"  from "The Heights of Macchu Pichu," 

and a two-line poem, "Point."
     The author of the poetry in the film "Paterson" is Ron Padgett -- 

and here are links to my previous postings of two of his poems: 

 "The Roman Numerals" and "The Giraffe."

 
     At the website Poets.org one may find 38 poems by William Carlos Williams and 11 poems by Pablo Neruda.  At PoetryFoundation.org one may find find 27 poems by Pablo Neruda and 120 poems by William Carlos Williams and 15 poems by Ron Padgett.

To love, in perfect syllables

     While looking for Valentine verse with a math connection, I opened my copy of The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll (Chancellor Press, 1982).  And found this one in which Carroll (a pen name for English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodson (1832-1898)) uses the word one twice and the word half twice and has counted sounds so that in each line the number of syllables is either a cube of an integer or is perfect.

        Lesson in Latin     by Lewis Carroll    (May 1888)   

Neruda speaks of numeration

The collection, Late and Posthumous Poems, 1968-1974 (Grove Press, 1988) by Chilean Nobelist Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) offers to readers a collection of Neruda's later work, ably translated by Ben Belitt.  Here is a poem that explores the vast world opened by the invention of numeration.

     28325674549     by Pablo Neruda

     A hand made the number.
     It joined one little stone
     to another, one thunderclap
     to another,
     one fallen eagle
     to another, one
     arrowhead to another,
     and then with the patience of granite
     the hand 
     made a double incision, two wounds,
     and two grooves:  and a
     number was born.

Spanish favorites

One of my favorite DC-area poet-people is Yvette Neisser Moreno -- who, besides giving us her own work, is active in translation of  Spanish-language poetry into English, most recently (with Patricia Bejarano Fisher) a Spanish and English edition of Venezuelan poet Maria Teresa Ogliastri’s South Pole/Polo Sur  (Settlement House, 2011).  Although I have not found any mathematical poems by Moreno, I learned from an interview that the Chilean Nobelist Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) is her favorite poet and I therefore present here the geometrically vivid opening opening stanza of Part XI of Neruda's well-known long poem, The Heights of Macchu Pichu: A Bilingual Edition (The Noonday Press, 1966). 

What is the point? -- consider Euclid

A two-line poem by Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda (1904-73), found in my bilingual edition of Extravagaria, reminded me of the poetic nature of several of the opening expressions of Euclid's geometry.  Both of these follow: