The stimulus for this posting appeared a few weeks ago in the Washington Post -- in an article that considers the loneliness of women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math).
For me, it was never a conscious thing -- the counting. It simply happened. The numbers are small and you know, if you are a woman and a mathematician in a room full of mathematicians, how many women are in the room. Any room. It is a small counting number. Sometimes it is 1.
Showing posts with label counting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label counting. Show all posts
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Earthquake and Hurricane
It would not be easy to argue that a poem whose numbers merely identify its stanzas is "mathematical" but "Curriculum Vitae," found at poets.org and written by Pullitzer Prize winning poet Lisel Mueller, also contains the words "earthquake" and "hurricane" and thereby is significant on this Saturday in Silver Spring -- five days after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake damaged both the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral and on the very day that millions of us are watching the progress of Hurricane Irene as it storms north along the eastern coast of the US. In acknowledgment of these days, I invite you to read this fine poem:
Labels:
counting,
Douglas Goetsch,
earthquake,
hurricane,
Lisel Mueller,
mathematics,
poetry,
Sherman Alexie
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The wind, counting
Who can ever forget
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?
Labels:
Carl Sandburg,
counting,
poem,
poetry,
wind
Monday, June 13, 2011
Stanescu - poetic mathematics
Today I found a link to a recent article, "Matematica şi poezia," that considers commonalities among the arts and mathematics and, therein, mentions a poem by Nichita Stanescu (1933-1984) which Gabriel Prajitura and I have translated. The poem, "Poetic Mathematics," is dedicated to Romanian mathematician Solomon Marcus. Here is Gabi's and my translation:
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Counting on things -- a prose poem
Russell Edson is one of the contemporary masters of the prose poem (a poem whose words are organized into paragraphs rather than stanzas). A selection from May Swenson's prose poem (and short novel) "Giraffe" is available in the October 19 blog posting. Here is Edson's poem "One Two Three, One Two Three" -- which considers the secrets hidden inside one's head. Another mind, even that of one of our children, is a mystery incompletely known to any of us.
Labels:
count,
counting,
mathematics,
Oberlin College Press,
one,
poetry,
prose poem,
Russell Edson,
three,
two
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Two and four and eight and birds
Pennsylvanian Craig Czury works as a travelling poet in schools, homeless shelters, prisons, mental hospitals, and community centers around the world. Czury sent me the following translation, "Writing Sheet," by Willie Westwood of a poem by Jacques Prévert (1900-1977) -- the original French version may be found at Westwood's site (scroll down).
Labels:
counting,
Craig Czury,
French,
Jacques Prevert,
poetry,
Willie Westwood
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . .
At Peter Cameron's Blog, "Counting the things that need to be counted," the July 14, 2010 entry contains a reflective poem entitled "Millenium" which meditates on the ten digits in stanzas whose lengths count them. Here are the opening stanzas:
Labels:
ambiguity,
counting,
digits,
mathematics,
Peter Cameron,
poetry
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Counting rhymes -- Catalan, Bell numbers
In mathematics, the Catalan numbers (named for Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan, 1814–1894, and beginning with 1, 1, 2, 5, 14, 42, 132, 429, . . . ) and the Bell numbers (named for the Scottish mathematician Eric Temple Bell, 1883-1960, and beginning with 1, 1, 2, 5, 15, 52, 203, 877, . . . ), provide answers to a variety of mathematical counting-problems, including counting the number of rhyme schemes for stanzas of poetry. In English, earliest classification of rhyme schemes dates back to George Puttenham and his treatise, The Arte of English Poesie (published around 1590).
Labels:
Bell,
Catalan,
counting,
counting rhyme,
George Puttenham,
mathematics,
poetry,
Puttenham diagram,
rhyme scheme
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Self-portrait with numbers
Visual poet Geof Huth lives and blogs in Schenectady, NY. In 2010 he turned 50 and early in 2011 he sent me (via snail mail, on smooth white paper) a letter. The letter is a poem; the poem is a celebration of life, a sort of self-portrait, using numbers. Geof gave me permission to post it here.
Labels:
counting,
digit,
Geof Huth,
JoAnne Growney,
meter,
natural number,
numbers,
poem,
poetry,
portrait
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Celebrate Constraints -- Happy Birthday, OULIPO
Patrick Bahls and Richard Chess of the University of North Carolina at Ashville have organized a "Conference on Constrained Poetry" to be held on November 19-20 in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of OULIPO (short for French: OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle), founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. The group defines the term littérature potentielle as (rough translation): "the seeking of new structures and patterns that may be used by writers in any way they enjoy." Constraints are used to trigger new ideas and the Oulipo group is an ongoing source of novel techniques, often based on mathematical ideas -- such as counting letters and syllables, substitution algorithms, permutations, palindromes, and even chess problems.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Giraffe -- novel (& prose poem) by May Swenson
Poet and playright May Swenson (1913-89) was born in Utah to Mormon parents and grew up in a home in which Swedish was the primary language. Swenson wrote of the experience of poetry as "based in a craving to get through the curtains of things as they appear, to things as they are, and then into the larger, wilder space of things as they are becoming." Here are the opening stanzas of Swenson's prose poem, "GIRAFFE: A Novel," from In Other Words: New Poems (Knopf, 1987). I think this is FUN -- and hope you also enjoy it.
Labels:
counting,
giraffe,
May Swenson,
poem,
prose poem
Friday, October 1, 2010
Nursing--and other vital applications of counting
Although counting is one of the basic activities of mathematics, its importance also extends to the highest mathematical levels. We count the solutions to systems of equations, the crossings in a diagram of a knot, the intersections of surfaces in multi-dimensional space, the necessary repititions in a circuit covering the edges of a graph. Counting likewise imposes order on some of life's difficult and non-mathematical tasks. In Veneta Masson's poem, "Arithmetic of Nurses," we have a vivid picture of the careful alertness required of those who cares for ill patients.
Following Masson's poem, is "Things to Count On," one of my own poems of counting--a prose poem describing the way that numbers order the life of a frugal farmer and his family, working to make ends meet in Pennsylvania in the middle of the 20th century.
Following Masson's poem, is "Things to Count On," one of my own poems of counting--a prose poem describing the way that numbers order the life of a frugal farmer and his family, working to make ends meet in Pennsylvania in the middle of the 20th century.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Poets who Count
For some poets, counting is part of the language of the poem. For others, counting determines the structure. Here are two poems of the former sort -- "Counting" by British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) and "Adding It Up" by New England poet Philip Booth (1925-2007) -- followed by opening stanzas of a poem for which counting is part of both content and structure: "Millennium" by mathematician Peter Cameron .
Labels:
account,
add,
blog,
count,
counting,
measure,
numbers,
one,
Peter Cameron,
Philip Booth,
Philip Larkin,
poetry,
spiral,
ten,
translation,
two
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
In the same family -- a poet and a mathematician
When a poet and a mathematician are members of the same family, understandings result. Ohio poet Cathryn Essinger is a twin of a mathematician and writes about this relationship. Here are opening stanzas of two of her poems.
Labels:
bound,
Cathryn Essinger,
combinatorics,
congruence,
counting,
geometry,
infinity,
Kathabela Wilson,
mathematics,
node,
poetry,
prime,
rational,
Rick Wilson,
twin,
two
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