Bernadette Turner teaches mathematics at Lincoln University in Missouri. And, via a long-ago email (lost for a while, and then found) she has offered this love poem enlivened by the terminology of geometry.
Parallel Lines Joined Forever by Bernadette Turner
We started out as just two parallel lines
in the plane of life.
I noticed your good points from afar,
but always kept same distance.
I assumed that you had not noticed me at all.
Showing posts with label angle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label angle. Show all posts
Monday, June 13, 2016
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Geometry of baseball
Many poems are written of baseball; a few of them involve mathematics -- see the posting for April 9, 2010 for math-related baseball poems by Marianne Moore (1877-1972) and Jerry Wemple; see the posting for September 18, 2011 for one by Jonathan Holden.
Today I feature the opening stanza from a baseball poem by Pennsylvania poet, Le Hinton.
from Our Ballpark by Le Hinton
This is the place where my father educated us:
an open-air school of tutelage and transformation.
This is where we first learned
to count to three, then later to calculate the angle
of a line drive bouncing off the left field wall.
We studied the geometry and appreciated the ballet
of third to second to first, a triple play.
. . .
Today I feature the opening stanza from a baseball poem by Pennsylvania poet, Le Hinton.
from Our Ballpark by Le Hinton
This is the place where my father educated us:
an open-air school of tutelage and transformation.
This is where we first learned
to count to three, then later to calculate the angle
of a line drive bouncing off the left field wall.
We studied the geometry and appreciated the ballet
of third to second to first, a triple play.
. . .
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Similar, self-similar -- fractals, a poem
In geometry two objects are said to be similar if they have the same shape --- which happens if their angles are the same size and occur in the same sequence. For example, any pair of triangles with angles 30, 60, and 90 degrees are similar; also, the lengths of pairs of corresponding sides of these triangles have the same ratio.
A term used in the terminology of fractals is self-similarity: a self-similar object has exactly (or approximately) the same shape as a part of itself. A variety of objects in the real world, such as ferns and coastlines, are approximately self-similar: parts of them show the same statistical properties at many scales. At the end of this post are a couple of diagrams that illustrate how a fractal may be developed. But first, experience the generative beauty of self-similarity via a poem by Maryland poet Greg McBride. Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010), quoted in McBride's epigraph, often is nicknamed "the father of fractals."
A term used in the terminology of fractals is self-similarity: a self-similar object has exactly (or approximately) the same shape as a part of itself. A variety of objects in the real world, such as ferns and coastlines, are approximately self-similar: parts of them show the same statistical properties at many scales. At the end of this post are a couple of diagrams that illustrate how a fractal may be developed. But first, experience the generative beauty of self-similarity via a poem by Maryland poet Greg McBride. Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010), quoted in McBride's epigraph, often is nicknamed "the father of fractals."
Labels:
angle,
Benoit Mandelbrot,
fractal,
Greg McBride,
Innisfree,
mathematics,
poem,
recursion,
self-similar
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Geometry of Love
A couple of weeks ago my "Google Alert" linked me to a posting of a science poem concerning "the geometry of love." The posting -- at The Finch and Pea -- is a poem that is both elegant and precise (and one that has been included in the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics, that Sarah Glaz and I collected and edited several years ago). Here it is:
The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell (England, 1621-1678)
My love is of a birth as rare
As ‘tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
The Definition of Love by Andrew Marvell (England, 1621-1678)
My love is of a birth as rare
As ‘tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
Labels:
Andrew Marvell,
angle,
conjunction,
geometry,
infinite,
mathematics,
parallel,
planisphere,
poem,
union
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Dimensions of a soul
In the poem below, Young Smith uses carefully precise terms of Euclidean geometry to create a vivid interior portrait.
She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul by Young Smith
The shape of her soul is a square.
She knows this to be the case
because she often feels its corners
pressing sharp against the bone
just under her shoulder blades
and across the wings of her hips.
She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul by Young Smith
The shape of her soul is a square.
She knows this to be the case
because she often feels its corners
pressing sharp against the bone
just under her shoulder blades
and across the wings of her hips.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Can you SEE the monument?
Links to non-intersecting celebrations of April
as National Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month
as National Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month
Recently I revisited my copy of Elizabeth Bishop: The Compete Poems, 1927-1979 (FSG, 1999) and turned to "The Monument" -- a poem mathematically interesting for its geometry. Here are the opening lines; the complete text and many other Bishop poems are available online here:
from The Monument by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
Each is turned half-way round so that
its corners point toward the sides
of the one below and the angles alternate.
Labels:
angle,
box,
Carol Frost,
cube,
Elizabeth Bishop,
half-way,
line,
monument,
parallel,
side
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Angles in Alaska
Last Thursday evening I was honored to read in Takoma Park's Third Thursday poetry series -- along with poets Judy Neri and Kathleen O'Toole -- and my reading focused on poems of my times in Alaska. The brilliant geometry of our 49th state affected me strongly and "Angles of Light" became the title poem for a chapbook I published with Finishing Line Press in 2009. Here is section 3 (of 7) from that poem.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Algebra cadabra
It was my good fortune to meet Colette Inez back in the early 1990s when she was poet-in-residence at Bucknell University. Then, as now, I was collecting poems-with-mathematics, and I have long loved this poem that weaves figuring into forests.
Forest Children by Colette Inez
We heard swifts feeding in air,
sparrows ruffling dusty feathers,
a tapping on stones, mud, snow, pulp
when rain came down, the hiss of fire.
Counting bird eggs in a dome of twigs,
we heard trees fall and learned
to name them on a page for school.
Forest Children by Colette Inez
We heard swifts feeding in air,
sparrows ruffling dusty feathers,
a tapping on stones, mud, snow, pulp
when rain came down, the hiss of fire.
Counting bird eggs in a dome of twigs,
we heard trees fall and learned
to name them on a page for school.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
A chance encounter
I invite you to celebrate the coming of the new year 2013 with a poem I like a lot.
Alberta poet Alice Major produces poems that feel good in the mouth when you read them aloud. As in "Locate the site," offered below. From the repeated t's in her title and the c's in her epigraph to her closing lines with "accept / the guidance of whatever calculating god / has taken you in care," I hugely enjoy the vocal experience of reading Major's words; and that pleasure enhances their meaning. That her terms often are mathy adds still more enjoyment.
Locate the site by Alice Major
To find a city, make a chance encounter
The plane sails in above the setter-coloured fields
swathed in concentric lines of harvest,
circle on square. I find myself returning
to this place that wasn't home.
Alberta poet Alice Major produces poems that feel good in the mouth when you read them aloud. As in "Locate the site," offered below. From the repeated t's in her title and the c's in her epigraph to her closing lines with "accept / the guidance of whatever calculating god / has taken you in care," I hugely enjoy the vocal experience of reading Major's words; and that pleasure enhances their meaning. That her terms often are mathy adds still more enjoyment.
Locate the site by Alice Major
To find a city, make a chance encounter
The plane sails in above the setter-coloured fields
swathed in concentric lines of harvest,
circle on square. I find myself returning
to this place that wasn't home.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Word Play -- "Of Time and the Line"
Charles Bernstein, poet and teacher, experiments with poetry and prefers "opaque" and "impermeable" writing -- to awaken readers "from the hypnosis of absorption." In the poem below he does, as mathematicians also do, multiplies ideas by playing with them -- here using "line."
Of Time and the Line by Charles Bernstein
George Burns likes to insist that he always
takes the straight lines; the cigar in his mouth
is a way of leaving space between the
lines for a laugh. He weaves lines together
by means of a picaresque narrative;
Of Time and the Line by Charles Bernstein
George Burns likes to insist that he always
takes the straight lines; the cigar in his mouth
is a way of leaving space between the
lines for a laugh. He weaves lines together
by means of a picaresque narrative;
Labels:
angle,
Charles Bernstein,
line,
lines,
math,
poem,
postmodern,
word play
Thursday, September 20, 2012
The view from here -- or there
From Nashville math teacher and blogger, Tad Wert, I learned of this poem, "Geometry, Lost Cove" by his Harpeth Hall School colleague, Georganne Harmon; in it, Harmon examines the contrasts in appearances when objects are seen from different distances. (And the mathematician goes on to say, Ah, yes -- in other words, some mappings of a space do not preserve distance.)
Geometry, Lost Cove by Georganne Harmon
The ridge across this cove
is straight as a ruled line,
its bend as pure as an angle
on a student’s quadrilled page.
Beyond it another ridge lies
straight-backed, as well,
drawn off by its touch with sky.
Geometry, Lost Cove by Georganne Harmon
The ridge across this cove
is straight as a ruled line,
its bend as pure as an angle
on a student’s quadrilled page.
Beyond it another ridge lies
straight-backed, as well,
drawn off by its touch with sky.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
A poetic perspective on algebra
Last Monday (April 4), the Washington Post had an article concerning the value of Algebra II as a predictor of college and work success. Since then I have heard numerous successful people point out that they did not have the cited course. Also on April 4, NPR had a feature on the advantages of being bilingual. My own mind joined these two stories -- for me, algebra is a second language and has enabled my learning of lots of other things.
Colette Inez 's poem "Forest Children" uses the language of poetry to speak of algebra (and of her concern for shrinking woodlands).
Colette Inez 's poem "Forest Children" uses the language of poetry to speak of algebra (and of her concern for shrinking woodlands).
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Coleridge: A Mathematical Problem
"A Mathematical Problem" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) -- found online at Elite Skills Classics -- uses verse to describe construction of an equilateral triangle; Coleridge introduces the poem with a letter to his brother telling of his admiration of mathematics, a view rather rare among poets.
Labels:
angle,
centre,
circle,
construction,
equilateral triangle,
Euclid,
line,
mathematical,
mathematics,
poetry,
point,
problem,
proposition,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Sarah Glaz
Friday, October 15, 2010
Voices in a Geometry Classroom
I have been invited to return next week (October 20 at 7 PM) to Bloomsburg University, where I taught mathematics for lots of years, for a poetry reading. Preparation for the reading (which celebrates my new book, Red Has No Reason) drew my thinking back to my teaching days at Bloom and to "Geometry Demonstration," a poem about the arguments in my head as I faced a particularly challenging class of geometry students. Here it is.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic
My introduction to French poet Guillevic (1909-97) came from UK poet Tim Love who found three of his triangle poems translated into Italian. Jacqueline Lapidus translated them for me from French into English, after which I also found Guillevic's collection Geometries (Englished by Richard Sieburth, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) -- with its circles, ellipses, parallels, and so on. And so, beyond these three, there will be more to enjoy later.
Labels:
angle,
base,
equilateral,
Guillevic,
isosceles,
Jacqueline Lapidus,
scalene,
side,
Tim Love,
triangle
Thursday, July 29, 2010
A wedding song -- shaped by mathematics
This posting includes a stanza from of "A Wedding on Earth" by Annie Finch. In the poet's words: the poem has 11 stanzas with 11 lines for a total of 121 lines, this number symbolizing the two single members of a pair joining into a 2, which is the prevailing theme of the poem; and each stanza combining [averaging] the stanza of Spenser's epithalamion (18 lines) with Sappho's stanza (4 lines).
Labels:
angle,
Annie Finch,
balanced,
circling,
geometry,
intersection,
line,
mathematics,
one,
pairs,
paradox,
pyramid,
square,
Tupelo Press,
two,
wedding,
Wompo
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Miroslav Holub, poet and scientist
Miroslav Holub (1923-1998), Czech poet and immunologist who excelled in both endeavors, is one of my favorite poets. He combines scientific exactitude with empathy and absurdity. Here are samples:
The Corporal Who Killed Archimedes
With one bold stroke
he killed the circle, tangent
and point of intersection
in infinity.
Labels:
absurd,
angle,
circle,
infinity,
intersection,
Miroslav Holub,
science,
sine,
tangent
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