Last week (on November 6) I was invited to read some of my poems at the River Poets reading in Bloomsburg, PA (where I lived and taught for a bunch of years). Among the friends that I had a chance to greet were Susan and Richard Brook -- and, from them, received this mathy poem by Pullitzer-Prize-winning-poet Vijay Seshadri.
Imaginary Number by Vijay Seshadri
The mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
is not big and is not small.
Big and small are
comparative categories, and to what
could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
be compared?
Showing posts with label imaginary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label imaginary. Show all posts
Friday, November 14, 2014
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Love mathematics!
In the stanzas below, I have some fun with math terminology. Hope you'll enjoy it too.
Love! by JoAnne Growney
Love algebra! Through variable numbers
of factored afternoons and prime evenings,
party in and out of your circle of associates,
identify your identity, meet your inverse.
Love! by JoAnne Growney
Love algebra! Through variable numbers
of factored afternoons and prime evenings,
party in and out of your circle of associates,
identify your identity, meet your inverse.
Labels:
arithmetic,
calculus,
chaos,
identity,
imaginary,
Integral,
inverse,
Mobius band,
pi,
prime,
rational,
real,
symmetries,
tangent
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The magic of "i"
An exciting math event occurred last week -- the opening of MoMath,
a Manhattan museum that makes math fun.
from Voyage around the Square Root of Minus One by Paul Hartal
. . . Mathematical equations are embedded
with mysterious forces
and their uncanny power transcends
the cognitive faculties of the human mind.
Labels:
imaginary,
mathematical,
minus,
Paul Hartal,
poetry,
square root
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Imagine new numbers
As a child I wrote poems but abandoned the craft until many years later when I was a math professor; at that later time some of my poems related to ideas pertinent to my classroom. For Number Theory classes "A Mathematician's Nightmare" gave a story to the unsolved Collatz conjecture; in Abstract Algebra "My Dance Is Mathematics" gave the mathematical history a human component.
My editor-colleague (Strange Attractors), Sarah Glaz, also has used poems for teaching -- for example, "The enigmatic number e." And Marion Cohen brings many poems of her own and others into her college seminar course, "Truth & Beauty: Mathematics in Literature." Add a west-coaster to these east-coast poet-teachers -- this time a California-based contributor: teacher, poet, and blogger (Math Mama Writes) Sue VanHattum. VanHattum (or "Math Mama") is a community college math teacher interested in all levels of math learning. Some of her own poems and selections from other mathy poets are available at the Wikispace, MathPoetry, that she started and maintains. Here is the poet's recent revision of a poem from that site, a poem about the invention (or discovery?) of imaginary numbers.
Imaginary Numbers Do the Trick by Sue VanHattum
My editor-colleague (Strange Attractors), Sarah Glaz, also has used poems for teaching -- for example, "The enigmatic number e." And Marion Cohen brings many poems of her own and others into her college seminar course, "Truth & Beauty: Mathematics in Literature." Add a west-coaster to these east-coast poet-teachers -- this time a California-based contributor: teacher, poet, and blogger (Math Mama Writes) Sue VanHattum. VanHattum (or "Math Mama") is a community college math teacher interested in all levels of math learning. Some of her own poems and selections from other mathy poets are available at the Wikispace, MathPoetry, that she started and maintains. Here is the poet's recent revision of a poem from that site, a poem about the invention (or discovery?) of imaginary numbers.
Imaginary Numbers Do the Trick by Sue VanHattum
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Numbers from the Piano
Of all of the things we might try to say when we sit down to write a poem, which are the ones we should choose? Sometimes we may say what first occurs to us -- begin to write and keep going until we are done. This may suffice -- or it may seem to lack care. To be more careful, we might seek a pattern to follow: perhaps we might form lines whose syllable-counts follow the Fibonacci numbers. Or construct a sonnet -- fourteen lines with five heart-beats per line and some rhyme. Or devise a scheme of our own.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Is mathematics discovered -- or invented?
The issue of whether mathematics is invented or discovered is posed often. Less frequently, queries as to where poetry falls in these categories. Perhaps individual answers to these questions depend on how each of us, from the inside, views the workings of the mind. Here we have, from poet (and math teacher) Amy Uyematsu,"The Invention of Mathematics."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)