Each time I open a new issue of Scientific American I am delighted to turn to "Meter", a poetry feature begun in 2020 and edited by longtime science writer, Dava Sobel. One of my early favorites in "Meter" (found here in the February, 2020 issue) is "Mathematical Glossolalia" by Jennifer Gresham -- and Gresham has given me permission to include the poem here:
Mathematical Glossolalia by Jennifer Gresham
As though time could have a hobby
we speak in eigenvalues, the harmonious
oscillations in the green flash before sunset.
We interpret raised to the power to mean
you were taken in by numbers
as a young babe & your childhood
can be classified irrational. Euclid,
Euler, the empty set's a nest atop a piling.
If two words diverge on the open seas &
the dot product is without derivative, the intercept
can be found only by Venn diagrams on the tongue.
Swallowed by wave functions, turning back, theorems
to explain the circumference of illusion, good heavens,
the sailboat's isosceles never goes slack.
Jen Gresham is founder of Work for Humanity; she has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland. "Mathematical Glossolalia" is from her 2005 collection, Diary of a Cell, winner of the Steel Toe Books poetry prize, is available here. At this link, a bit of background about the word "glossolalia".
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