Math is Brewing . . .

For one of my granddaughters who likes poems, I recently purchased If You're Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand:  Poems about School by Kalli Dakos (Aladdin Paperbacks, 1995).  It's hard to find school poems that are non-critical of math -- but this one, at least, has some rhyming fun while cooking it.

Math is Brewing and I'm in Trouble     by Kalli Dakos

       Numbers single,
       Numbers double,
       Math is brewing
       And I'm in trouble,

       If I could mix a magic brew,
       Numbers, I'd take care of you.

Multiplied by Rain

     There are many mathematical terms that are used in daily life -- not only multiplied and divided and negative but also closure and identity and field and commute -- and it is fun for me, a math person, to see poets use such terms in new and thoughtful ways.
     Poet Jane Hirschfield weaves words into fine tapestries that give us new dimensions of meaning.  The Table of Contents of her new book, The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), is scattered with mathematical terms -- we find zero, plus, subtraction,  and the final title, "Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain."  This poem first appeared in Poetry (2012) and is available at the Poetry Foundation website along with more than thirty additional Hirshfield poems.

Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain   by Jane Hirshfield

     Lie down, you are horizontal.
     Stand up, you are not.