17-word Haiku

     On 25 May 2013 this blog contained an announcement of NASA's Haiku-to-Mars contest.  The contest rules are here -- and July 1 is the deadline for submission.  Voting to select three favorite submissions will begin on July 15.  For my own submission I decided to use numerical constraints -- I limited my Haiku to one-syllable words and used an increasing-decreasing pattern of the lengths of words.  Here is an example (not the one I submitted, which begins "I go for Mars . . .").

A is the sign first
spread through thoughts –- stretched, breathed, squared, sighed.
Trace thru all to Z.

Haiku with a number or two

     Recently Irish poet and New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon read at the Folger Shakespeare Library -- and, sadly, I missed the event.  To note the occasion, however, I turned to a Muldoon collection on my shelf, purchased a dozen years ago when I heard him read -- a lively and enjoyable performance, with wit and gusto -- at Bucknell University's Stadler Poetry Center.  
     I have not found significant mathematical imagery in Muldoon's work -- but here are several stanzas from his "Hopewell Haiku" that include numbers.

     XLI        by Paul Muldoon

          Jean paints one toenail.
          In a fork of the white ash,
          quick, a cardinal.    

Haiku to Mars

 Send a Haiku to Mars on the MAVEN!

NASA has a contest (deadline July 1) 

to select three Haiku to send to Mars:  

NASA is offering all of us a way to  ‘Go to Mars’ aboard a DVD flying on the solar winged MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiter via a contest managed by the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU/LASP).  Haiku messages will be voted on by the public; the top three most popular entries will be sent to Mars on the MAVEN spacecraft and will be displayed on the MAVEN website.  More information here.

7-prime Haiku

Start with 2 - 3 - 5  
and then 7 - 11 - 
13 - 17

Poetry with mathematical symbols

On the internet and elsewhere a variety of viewpoints are expressed about the criteria poetry should satisfy to be "mathematical." Today I want to introduce samples and links for three writers:   Bob Grumman (Florida), Gregory Vincent St Thomasino (New York), and Kaz Maslanka (California).  Grumman and Maslanka write poems with a strong visual element and, as the blogs and comments for all three testify, they differ in their views of what may be properly called "mathematical" poetry..