When parallel lines meet, that is LOVE

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.  

Be someone TO COUNT ON in 2015

By any means of counting, 

the number of incarcerated persons in the United States 

is TOO LARGE

and the proportion of prisoners with BLACK SKIN

is TOO GREAT
  and there is TOO MUCH VIOLENCE and DEATH in our prisons.

RESOLVE to stop the violence (RSVP)  in America's prisons!  Work for fair sentencing and Equal Justice!  Let your resolutions for the New Year 2015 be inspired by a poem;  the one below is from Poetry, 2009, found at poetryfoundation.org  -- and you may find more at Split This Rock.

To the voice of the retired warden of Huntsville Prison
(Texas death chamber)                 by Averill Curdy

Until wolf-light I will count my sheep,
       Adumbrated, uncomedic, as they are.
       One is perdu, two, qualm, three
                           Is sprawl, four, too late,

Giving thanks for poems

     As Thanksgiving approaches I am thankful not only for many blessings but also for the numbers I use to count them -- eight grandchildren, four children, two parents, one sister, one brother, an uncountable number of friends.  And I am thankful for poetry.  Here is one of my favorite math-related poems.

How to Find the Longest Distance Between Two Points   
  
                                                     by James Kirkup (England, 1919 - 2009)

From eye to object no straight line is drawn,
Though love's quick pole directly kisses pole.
The luckless aeronaut feels earth and moon
Curve endlessly below, above the soul
His thought imagines, engineers in space.

Geometry of distance

     Some of the poems herein arrive as gifts from friends.  Today's poem came via e-mail from Susan (a Californian whom I have gotten to know when she visits my neighbor, Priscilla).  Susan got it from Larry Robinson who connected me with the poet, Richard Retecki, for permission to post it here.
     As has been said in other contexts, It takes a village . . .    
     Thanks to you all!

     ascension           by Richard Retecki

               for Jonathan Glass

     the geometry
     of distance annoys
     is unfilled

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.

Seeing Distance -- geometry in photography

One of my favorite poem-stanza styles is a syllable-square -- it distributes the weights of the words in a way that pleases me. The poem below has squares of several sizes and I post it as a prior-to-seeing-the-exhibit opposite to my response to photography currently displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum -- "Pilgrimage," by Annie Leibovitz. While many photographs, my own in particular, seem particularly flat, such was not the case with these. As if I were wearing special lenses, I was able to see and feel depth – not only in a view of Niagara Falls but also in the fabric and buttons of a dress that had belonged to Emily Dickinson.

The Length of a Coastline

In the nineties, fifteen or so years ago, when I began posting mathematical poems on the Internet, two of my earliest connections were Ken Stange, a poet and polymath and professor of psychology at Ontario's Nipissing University, and his daughter Kate, then a teen.  Kate publicized her love of mathematics and poetry by creating an online collection,"Mathematical Poetry:  A Small Anthology" which she has continued to maintain for many years--during which she has completed undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics.