On November 9 I had the pleasure (hosted by Irina Mitrea and Maria Lorenz) of talking ("Thirteen Ways that Math and Poetry Connect") with the Math Club at Temple University and, on November 5, I visited Marion Cohen's "Mathematics in Literature" class at Arcadia University. THANKS for these good times.
This
Fib
poem
says THANK-YOU
to all those students
from Arcadia and Temple
who participated in "math-poetry" with me --
who held forth with sonnets, pantoums,
squares, snowballs, and Fibs --
poetry
that rests
on
math.
My Temple host, Irina Mitrea, and I share something else besides being women who love mathematics -- the Romanian poet, Nichita Stanescu (1933-83), is a favorite for both of us. My October 23 posting ("On the Life of Ptolemy") offered one of Sean Cotter's recently published translations of poems by Stanescu and below I include more Stanescu-via-Cotter -- namely, two of the ten sections of "An Argument with Euclid." These stanzas illustrate Stanescu at his best -- irreverently using mathematical terminology and expressing articulate anger at seen and unseen powers of oppression.
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Monday, November 12, 2012
Monday, October 25, 2010
Writing poetry like mathematics
In an article about the Chilean mathematician and poet Nicanor Parra, Paul M Pearson says, : "Parra almost wrote poetry like he would a mathematical theorem using an extreme 'economy of language' with 'no metaphors, no literary figures.' " Today I present work by Nicanor Parra and Richard Aston, both of whom write their poetry with the same economy and care that are used when writing mathematics.
Labels:
arithmetic mean,
economy,
mathematician,
mathematics,
Nicanor Parra,
nothing,
plane,
poet,
poetry,
power,
precision,
Richard Aston,
Sisyphus,
whole,
zero
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