Happy Valentine's Day

      A perfect way for math-poetry fans to celebrate Valentine's Day is to visit the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters/CRC Pres, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me.  Here is a sample from that collection, a limerick;

     There Was a Young Maiden    by Bob Kurosaka*

       There was a young maiden named Lizt
       Whose mouth had a funny half-twist.
            She'd turned both her lips
            Into Mobius strips . . .
        'Til she's kissed you, you haven't been kissed!

     *Of Japanese heritage, Kurosaka was born in Lake George, NW -- he became a college teacher and author of science fiction and limericks.

     Here is a link to previous Valentine-related postings:  
this link leads to blog-search results for "Strange Attractors."

Celebrate with a MATHY Valentine

 Celebrate Valentine's Day with mathy verse!

Follow this link to see the variety of examples in previous posts.

Valentine Haiku

     Since 2011 February has been National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo); serious celebration of this event requires writing a Haiku each day;  for this year's Valentine's Day, I offer a mathy Covid-Valentine Haiku. 

LOVE has 4 letters --
2 for my hands, 2 for yours.
We wave, keep distant.

For the NaHaiWriMo blog, go here.

Find lots of MATHY VALENTINES by following this link
                                                         to the results of a blog SEARCH using the term "Valentine".

Happy Valentine's Day -- I love SEVEN!

Happy Valentine's Day!

                     I love seven –  as  a 

                                                          five-

                                                        letter

     word

    or

  as

            an                    

                                            acute     

                                        angle.

     Not only is seven prime, it is the number

     of my granddaughters who all like math --
     I want to make a mountain to celebrate 
     the girls and the women they become . . .  

Soon it will be February -- and Valentine's Day

     Looking back:  on February 12, 2011 I posted math-poetry suggestions for Valentine's Day at this link: Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . . ).   This posting from Feb 9 2013 offers verse along with an animated drawing of a heart-curve --a cardioid.    And this link goes to a mathematically poetic digital art exhibit (that includes a cardioid) by Guang Zhu.   
     For even more poetry related to the love-holiday, enter "Valentine" in the SEARCH box to the right.  Enjoy!

Celebrate Black History, Valentine's Day

February is Black History Month and on the 14th we celebrate love with Valentine's Day.  To find in this blog a variety of mathy poems on these topics (and many others) use the SEARCH box found at the top of the right-hand column of this blog.

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)   

Love and Mathematics -- Please be my Valentine!

Poet extraordinaire Maxine Kumin (1925-2014) died yesterday.  

Here is a link to a wonderful eleven of her poems from Persimmon Tree. 

Late in 2007, AKPeters released Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics, edited by Sarah Glaz and me.  Recently at a Howard County Math Festival I met a young man who browsed my copy of this anthology and found it the perfect Valentine.  And so might you.  Below I include a sample from the collection -- a love sonnet by Jean de Sponde (1557-1595), translated from the French by David Slavitt.

 Several previous postings have offered love poems of mathematics and mathematicians; 

these include 9 February 2013, 12 February 2012, 12 February 2011, 10 November 2011,  

30 August 2011, 12 February 2011, and 20 July 2010.

One Billion Rising

Below I repeat a syllable-square first posted on 18 August 2010 and included in Red Has No Reason.  Today, Valentine's Day, stand up and support "One Billion Rising" -- end violence against women.  

          More than the rapist, fear
          the district attorney,
          smiling for the camera,
          saying that thirty-six
          sex crimes per year is a
          manageable number.

Since this is a poetry-with-math blog I will end with a mathy observation:  this is a poem of 36 syllables that includes the number 36, a perfect square.

Limericks and a Cardioid -- for Valentine's Day

     Oh, math-lover most divine,

     for you this mathy Valentine --

          found when I looked
          in a calculus book --  
     a cardioid is the heart-sign. 

Be My Valentine

Unlike many newspapers, the British Guardian publishes poems -- and, on February 10, 2012, they offered a selection to celebrate the upcoming Valentine's day. Included, among work by more than a dozen notables, are poems by Wislawa Szymborska, John Donne, Derek Walcott (whose poem "Love After Love" is one of my favorites), Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Byron, and Carol Ann Duffy -- and a poem by John Fuller that is seasoned with some mathematical terminology. You will need to visit the Guardian article online for the whole of Fuller 's poem, "Valentine," but here are several snippets to whet your interest. (Enjoy the fun of rhyming mathematics with attics!) 

Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . . )

A perfect way to celebrate Valentine's Day -- especially for you who enjoy mathematics --  read (aloud and to each other) some "poems of love and mathematics." Such is easily possible, for the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me, contains words on the topic by more than 150 poetic voices.