Bold women count

Last evening at a poetry reading at Kensington Row Bookshop, I read my poem about Sophia Kovalevsky (posted on June 24); hearing it out loud before an attentive audience helped me to sense a couple of edits I need to make.  Conversations after the reading drew my focus once again to bold women.  Mathematics has some of these women --  and wants more.  Here, in a poem with some numbers, Margaret Atwood celebrates a woman who is not only bold but who burns.  Many of Atwood's words apply to difficulties (including being misunderstood by men) faced by women in mathematics  -- women who have "talent / to peddle a thing so nebulous / and without material form." 

     Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing        by Margaret Atwood   

     The world is full of women
     who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
     if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
     Get some self-respect
     and a day job.