Both a talented writer and an articulate conveyor of the culture of American Indians, Sherman Alexie is
a Spokane / Coeur d’Alene Indian from Wellpinit, Washington. Besides
several collections of poetry, Alexie has published novels and
short-stories; he wrote the screen-play for the 1998 film, Smoke
Signals. "Reservation Mathematics" is from Alexie's poetry collection First Indian on the Moon, (Hanging Loose Press, 1993) and was previously posted in this blog in January 2011.
Reservation Mathematics by Sherman Alexie
Showing posts with label measuring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label measuring. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Saturday, March 8, 2014
SHE measures the heavens . . .
Today is International Women's Day, celebrated with a charming video at google.com and here with lines from Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE), the earliest woman known to me who was both poet and mathematician.
The true woman who possesses exceeding wisdom,
She consults a tablet of lapis lazuli,
She gives advice to all lands,
She measures off the heavens, she places the
measuring cords on the earth.
These lines (found in the preface, translated from Sumerian sources by Ake W Sjoberg and E Bergmann S J) and much more poetry-with-math are found in Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters, 2008) -- a collection edited by Sarah Glaz and me.
The true woman who possesses exceeding wisdom,
She consults a tablet of lapis lazuli,
She gives advice to all lands,
She measures off the heavens, she places the
measuring cords on the earth.
These lines (found in the preface, translated from Sumerian sources by Ake W Sjoberg and E Bergmann S J) and much more poetry-with-math are found in Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters, 2008) -- a collection edited by Sarah Glaz and me.
Labels:
Enheduanna,
love,
mathematics,
measuring,
poems,
Strange Attractors,
wisdom
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Mathematics and race
Sherman Alexie is a Spokane / Coeur d’Alene Indian from Wellpinit, Washington. Besides several collections of poetry, Alexie has published novels and short-stories; he wrote the screen-play for the 1998 film, Smoke Signals. Here, in verse, he deals with the mathematics of racial identity:
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