Circle Power

Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle

         by Black Elk (1863-1950)  (translated from Sioux)

Everything the Power of the World does
is done in a circle.  The sky is round,
and I have heard that the earth is round
like a ball, and so are all the stars.
The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. 

Split This Rock 2014

     Plan now to attend the 4th national biennial Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness in Washington, DC, March 27-30, 2014.  The sixteen poets to be featured at the 2014 festival are:  Sheila Black, Franny Choi, Eduardo C. Corral, Gayle Danley, Natalie Diaz, Joy Harjo, Maria Melendez Kelson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dunya Mikhail, Shailja Patel, Wang Ping, Claudia Rankine, Tim Seibles, Myra Sklarew, Danez Smith, and Anne Waldman.   The website SplitThisRock.org offers photographs and more information about the festival.  It will be awesome!  

Perfect circle, Haiku

          Perfect circle round
               the moon
          In the center of the sky

by Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), from Book of Haikus  (Penguin, 2003).  Thanks, Francisco.

PS.  If Kerouac were a mathematician he'd have noticed that "perfect" is implied by the definition of "circle" and is unnecessary.  But Kerouac was a poet and he saw a different necessity.

Grandma got STEM

     There are so many fine websites to visit and blogs to read that it is hard to get to them all. One of my recent pleasures has been Grandma Got STEM (STEM  = Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), orchestrated by Rachel Levy, Harvey Mudd College, Mathematics.  Recent entries there that I've enjoyed are Martha Siegel (Towson University, Mathematics) and Carol Jo Crannell (mother of Annalisa Crannell, Franklin and Marshall College, Mathematics and Art).
     For a while I wondered how I might link these STEM pioneers to poetry and this morning was delighted to discover in a bio of poet Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge that her Chinese mother was a mathematician.  And these initial stanzas of Berssenbrugge's poem "Tan Tien" illustrate her familiarity with mathematical vocabulary.

Spheres and parallels

On 23 January 2013 I posted a latitude-longitude poem "Zero-Zero" by Elizabeth Bodien and today I offer another of her poems of celestial geometry, this one inspired by a painting by San Francisco artist Blazin.  Here, first, is Blazin's painting, followed by Bodien's poem -- both entitled "Midnight / Noon Along the Solar / Lunar Meridian." 

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. 

Geometry of a Gun

Despite the recent news media chatter about a "fiscal cliff," the event that we can't (and mustn't) stop thinking about is the December 14 massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. This draws me to a poem by Joan Mazza (whose poem "Digits" was featured earlier this week on New Year's Day); this new poem deals with the geometry of eggs and of bullets. Please think of gun control.

     Geometry Lesson       by Joan Mazza 

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.

A poem for a math-friend

     On July 14, 2012, my good friend, Toni Carroll, passed on. I first knew Toni in the 1980s as a colleague in the department of mathematical sciences at Bloomsburg University.  Her warmth and inclusiveness drew many people to her and I was one of these.  In my view she also was fearless.  While I continued to contemplate action, she moved quickly toward righting an injustice.  I have learned from her to be a bit more brave.  

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.

Spacetime

   Spacetime     by Miroslav Holub (1932-1998)

   When I grow up and you get small,
   then --

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.   

Black History Month -- celebrate Haynes and Hughes

Living on the border of Washington DC I am exposed to items of local history for our nation's capital.  One such item involves the "discovery" of Langston Hughes (1902-1967) by poet Vachel Lindsay (1879 - 1931) at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, a leading conference hotel in the city.   A second story is a mathematical one.  Martha Euphnemia Lofton Haynes (1890-1980), a fourth-generation Washingtonian, was the first black woman to earn a PhD in mathematics -- conferred in 1943 by Catholic University. 

Thinking about Thinking

The question of what it means to think is never far from my focus -- and is particularly on my mind during these days that the computer Watson is competing on the TV game show, Jeopardy.   Here is a poem I like a lot -- "New Math" by Cole Swensen  -- in which the poet (writing more than 20 years ago) considers the limits of computation (and whether it could aid persons unable to recognize faces). 

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.  

Poem and parody -- isomorphic?

In mathematics, algebraic systems that have different objects but the same structure are described as isomorphic.  The parody in poetry illustrates the same idea -- a new poem is created that matches the form of a chosen poem, but uses different words.  For example, here are the opening stanzas of a poem published in 1799 by Robert Southey (1777-1843) that was later parodied by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Mathematics and race

Sherman Alexie is a Spokane / Coeur d’Alene Indian from Wellpinit, Washington. Besides several collections of poetry, Alexie has published novels and short-stories; he wrote the screen-play for the 1998 film, Smoke Signals. Here, in verse, he deals with the mathematics of racial identity:

8 January 2011 -- Math-Poetry at JMM

Here's an invitation for math-poets -- at 5 PM on Saturday, January 8 at the 2011 Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans there will be an open reading of poetry related to mathematics.  All are invited.  Interested persons are invited to contact Gizem Karaali of Pomona College for more information. 

Ideal Geometry -- complex politics

Christopher Morley (1890-1957) was an American poet, novelist, and publisher who was the son of a poet and musician (Lilian Janet Bird) and a mathematics professor (Frank Morley) at Haverford College. His "Sonnet by a Geometer," below, is written in the voice of a circle and compares mathematical perfection with human imperfection.  For us who read the poem 90 years after its writing, Morley's phrase in line 13 -- "They talk of 14 points" -- is puzzling at first.

More of Pi in Poetry

Recording artist Kate Bush has written a song entitled “Pi” which includes some of π's digits in the lyrics. Likewise, Polish Nobelist (1996) Wislawa Szymborska also features its digits in her poem, “Pi,” which begins: