Along the north branch of the Susquehanna River in east-central Pennsylvania lies the town of Bloomsburg -- known for Bloomsburg University (where I taught math for a bunch of years) and for the Bloomsburg Fair -- an annual celebration that attracts hundreds of thousands of people during each last week of September.
I grew up loving fairs -- in my hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania, the last week of August brought the Indiana County Fair where we celebrated, with livestock and a carnival, the end of summer vacation.
More than twenty years ago I gathered some of my Bloomsburg Fair memories in a poem. The entire poem is found at this link; below I offer a sample of the mathy imagery from the poem.
from The Bloomsburg Fair by JoAnne Growney
. . .
In front of side-show tents,
a barker barks his come-on-ins.
Why don't my students receive theorems
as willingly as passersby
accept his lies?
. . .
If parallels will never meet—
then here's a man with snakes for hair,
and there's a woman with three eyes.
This poem appears in the anthology, COMMON WEALTH: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, Edited by Marjorie Maddox and Jerry Wemple, (2005, PSU Press).
Showing posts with label Susquehanna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Susquehanna. Show all posts
Monday, September 26, 2016
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