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.

Verses that count

At about.com one finds a variety of information -- from the dates of the rapidly approaching 2012 Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC to divisibility rules for integers to a type of poetry called mathemetrics.  Mathemetrical poetry has one topic: the length of the poem itself. Enjoy:

An example:

   This poem
   contains 14 words
   (if we count numerals
   as words) and 62 symbols.

Good numbers . . .

     My wish for the New Year 2012 is that you will have good numbers -- that your happiness will have high peaks, that your sadness and grief will weigh no more than you can bear.
     In the spirit of assessment and introspection that captures many of us at year-end, I offer a small poem, "Good Fortune" -- one that I wrote in late December ten years ago when I was, as I am now, taking stock. "Good Fortune" appeared in my 2006 chapbook, My Dance Is Mathematics (Paper Kite Press -- available online here). Another tiny poem, a more recent one, "14 Syllables" -- from Red Has No Reason (Plain View Press, 2010) -- continues the focus on assessment using numbers. 

What is the point? -- consider Euclid

A two-line poem by Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda (1904-73), found in my bilingual edition of Extravagaria, reminded me of the poetic nature of several of the opening expressions of Euclid's geometry.  Both of these follow: