Enough for everyone -- Russell Libby

Are you looking for a poem on a particular math topic?  One search strategy is to go to the Poetry Foundation website (another is to click on the green SEARCH BOX in the right column of this blog) and enter your math term into the search box; if, for example, you enter "geometry" one of the poems you find will be this one by Russell Libby (1956  -2012).  Both poet and organic farmer, Libby believed in sustainability:  all it takes is one well-cared-for seed to grow and spread.  Here is his "Applied Geometry." 

     Applied Geometry     by Russell Libby

     Applied geometry,   

     measuring the height   

     of a pine from   

     like triangles,   

Circling -- with Rilke

Ranier Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was born in Prague but emigrated to Germany and is one of the great modern lyric poets.   The following Rilke poems draw on images of circles.

One type of "mathematical" poetry

When I began (in the 1980s) collecting examples of "mathematical poetry," I sought lines of verse that included some mathematical terminology.  More recently, my view has expanded to include structual, visual, and algorithmic influcences from mathematics; however, the two samples from the work of William Blake (1757-1827), presented below, fit into that initial category -- selected as "mathematical" because of their vocabulary -- one speaks of "infinity," the other of "symmetry."  (Blake was an artist as well as poet and his volumes of poetry were illustrated with his prints.)  The following stanza is the opening quatrain for Blake's poem "Auguries of Innocence." 

A Lemma by Constance Reid

Constance Reid (1918-2010), died on October 14.  Sister of a mathematician (Julia Robinson), Reid wrote first about life in World War II factories that supported the war effort and then, later, several biographies (including one of her sister) and other books about mathematics.  Kenneth Rexroth's poem "A Lemma by Constance Reid" (offered below) is based on material appearing in Reid's popular book From Zero to Infinity:  What Makes Numbers Interesting (Thomas Y Crowell, 1955).  Reid is known for the enthusiasm and clarity with which she presented mathematical ideas--seeking to attract and to satisfy non-mathematical readers. 

Reflections on the Transfinite

     Georg Cantor (1845-1918), a German mathematician, first dared to think the counter-intuitive notion that not all infinite sets have the same size--and then he proved it:  The set of all real numbers (including all of the decimal numbers representable on the number line) cannot be matched in a one-to-one pairing with the set of counting (or natural) numbers -- 1,2,3,4, . . . .   Sets whose elements can be matched one-to-one with the counting numbers are termed "countable" -- and Cantor's result showed that the set of all real numbers is uncountable.
     Cantor developed an extensive theory of transfinite numbers -- and poet (as well as philosopher and professor) Emily Grosholz reflects on these in a poem:

Poetry and applied mathematics

Back in the 1980's when I began taking examples of poetry into my mathematics classrooms at Bloomsburg University, I think that I justified doing so by considering poetry as an application of mathematics.  For example, Linda Pastan applies algebra to give meaning to her poem of the same title.  Here are the opening lines.