Showing posts with label division. Show all posts
Showing posts with label division. Show all posts

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Poetry as Pure Mathematics

A recent email from Portuguese mathematician-poet F J "Francisco" Craveiro de Carvalho brought a 40-year-old stanza to my attention. First published in the May, 1974 issue of POETRY Magazine, we have these enigmatic lines by William Virgil Davis.  Enjoy!

       The Science of Numbers:  Or Poetry as Pure Mathematics

       Whatever you add you add at your peril.
       It is far better to subtract.  In poetry,
       Multiplication borders on madness.
       Division is the mistress we agree to sleep with. 

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Long division is difficult . . .

Last Monday included a visit with old friends of whom I see too little, Silver Spring artist Mark Behme -- with whom I did some art-poetry collaboration a few years  back -- and Chevy Chase artist-writer-economist-activist, Kyi May Kaung.  After lunch at nearby Mandalay we three walked to Mark's studio and hung out for a while, admiring and talking about his new work.  When I arrived home, I dug out several poems developed from Mark's sculpture -- finding some pieces I'd not thought about for a while.  Here is one of these, a mathy poem that partners with Mark's "Split Tales."

          Which Girl Am I?      by JoAnne Growney

          The girl who’s not forced to divide
          into the good girl and the real one
          is a lucky one.  I was eleven
          when I felt a crack begin.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Dividing by Zero

Fairy godmothers have their magic wands and mathematician have division by zero as a way to make the impossible happen -- for example, we can show that 2 equals 3:

Monday, July 26, 2010

Trouble with Math in School

     Sad and lonely experiences seem to produce more poems than joyful ones.  And so it is easier to find a poem about a trouble in a math class than success there.  Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) was a poet and translator whose work I admire.  Here is her math-class poem: