Solving equations . . .

Although poets as long ago as Henry Lok (1553?-1608?), Elizabeth Tollett (1694-1854), and William Blake  (1757-1827) used mathematical imagery in their poems, the first collection of poetry-with-mathematics that I came to was Against Infinity:  An Anthology of Contemporary Mathematical Poetry (Primary Press, 1979), collected and edited by Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp.  This volume introduced me to poems I could use with my math students and one of my long-term favorites is "Algebra" by Linda Pastan who has, in turn, become one of my favorite poets. 

Algebra cadabra

It was my good fortune to meet Colette Inez back in the early 1990s when she was poet-in-residence at Bucknell University. Then, as now, I was collecting poems-with-mathematics, and I have long loved this poem that weaves figuring into forests.

Forest Children     by Colette Inez

We heard swifts feeding in air,
sparrows ruffling dusty feathers,
a tapping on stones, mud, snow, pulp
when rain came down, the hiss of fire.
Counting bird eggs in a dome of twigs,
we heard trees fall and learned
to name them on a page for school. 

Latitude, longitude, and inauguration

Elizabeth Bodien now lives in a rural area in eastern Pennsylvania -- settling there after other lives in California, in Japan, in West Africa.  Here is a narrative poem using the geographic numbers of latitude and longitude drawn from the years that she was a childbirth instructor in West Africa.

Zero-Zero     by Elizabeth Bodien

Poetic Explorations of . . . Mathematicians

In the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (Volume 1, Issue 2), we find "Numen^Rology: A Poetic Exploration of the Lives and Work of Famous Mathematicians" by Saskatchewan poet, Mari-Lou Rowley. In addition to the following poem, "On Diophantus Arithmetica," Rowley's JHM collection includes "Ode to Alan Turing" and "On Euclid’s Book VII – Elementary Number Theory: Proposition 8." Rowley's lines below wonderfully describe the emotional flow that comes with engaging in mathematics -- as mathematical terms are translated into the human terms of wanting and forthcoming, kneading, . . . and yielding.

Things the fingers know

Blogger Peter Cameron sent me a link to an lively article, "Eveline Pye: Poetry in Numbers"  in the September 2011 issue of the statistics magazine, Significance.  Written by Julian Champkin, the article tells of Eveline Pye -- lively and interesting Glasgow statistician, teacher, and poet -- and includes a selection of her work. One of the poems offered therein is "Solving Problems."

Seeking a universal language

Is mathematics a universal language?  Not only is this universality often postulated but also it was said  -- some decades back -- that devices were broadcasting into space the intial decimal digits of pi, expecting that other intelligent beings would surely recognize the sequence of digits.  Robert Gethner examines this arrogance in a poem.