I have a good friend who does not care for the sorts of poetry that are written today. When I asked what he likes he cited "When I Was One-and-Twenty" by A E Housman (1859-1936) and the sonnet "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). My own preferences in poems, on the other hand, are less certain. I like to explore, to discover what new things may be said within new forms and constraints. The following selection, "Notes on Numbers" by Richard Kostelanetz, introduces some of the ideas that this artist/writer/critic explores in his visual poetry -- with numbers -- examples of which are available through links offered at the end of this posting.
Notes on Numbers by Richard Kostelanetz
Showing posts with label number. Show all posts
Showing posts with label number. Show all posts
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Friday, August 14, 2015
Primes and a paradox
Canadian poet Alice Major has loved and admired science and mathematics since girlhood and this background brings to her mathy poems both charm and amazement -- qualities that those of us who seriously studied mathematics easily lack. At the recent BRIDGES conference I had a chance to hang out with Alice for a while and to purchase her latest collection, Standard Candles (University of Alberta Press, 2015). Such fun to experience her views of infinities and paradoxes, of triangles and symmetries and formulas and ... .
Alice has given me permission to post two of her poems here; read on and enjoy "The god of prime numbers" and "Zeno's paradox."
Alice has given me permission to post two of her poems here; read on and enjoy "The god of prime numbers" and "Zeno's paradox."
Monday, June 22, 2015
Uncertainty . . .
Sometimes we find things of great value when we are looking for something else -- in fact, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges has said, The best way to find a good thing is to go looking for something else . . .
One of my recent stumbles (while looking for work by Borges) was onto the website of Robert Ronnow -- and I have found it a fun place to browse. Here is a sample, a poem from his recent collection, The Scientific Way to Do Mathematics:
Uncertainty by Robert Ronnow
--with a line by Pico Iyer
There cannot be two identical things in the world. Two
hydrogen atoms
offer infinite locations within their shells for electrons.
Thus, nothing can be definitely eventually known.
One of my recent stumbles (while looking for work by Borges) was onto the website of Robert Ronnow -- and I have found it a fun place to browse. Here is a sample, a poem from his recent collection, The Scientific Way to Do Mathematics:
Uncertainty by Robert Ronnow
--with a line by Pico Iyer
There cannot be two identical things in the world. Two
hydrogen atoms
offer infinite locations within their shells for electrons.
Thus, nothing can be definitely eventually known.
Labels:
identical,
infinite,
Jorge Luis Borges,
mathematics,
number,
poetry,
Robert Ronnow,
uncertainty,
verse,
zero
Thursday, March 19, 2015
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.
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.
Labels:
Jane Hirshfield,
logic,
mathematics,
multiplied,
negative,
number,
poetry
Friday, March 13, 2015
Three Greguerías
From Portugal, from Francisco -- who emailed me the gift of these lines:
Three Greguerías by Rámon Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963)
translated by Francisco J Craveiro de Carvalho and JoAnne
Holding her hoop the little girl goes to school and to the playground,
to play with the circle and its tangent.
Zeros are the eggs from which all the other numbers are hatched.
Numbers are the best acrobats in the world: they stand on top of each other without falling down.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna is considered the father of the greguería -- a one-liner in which he combined gentle humor with a metaphor.
Three Greguerías by Rámon Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963)
translated by Francisco J Craveiro de Carvalho and JoAnne
Holding her hoop the little girl goes to school and to the playground,
to play with the circle and its tangent.
Zeros are the eggs from which all the other numbers are hatched.
Numbers are the best acrobats in the world: they stand on top of each other without falling down.
Ramón Gómez de la Serna is considered the father of the greguería -- a one-liner in which he combined gentle humor with a metaphor.
Friday, November 14, 2014
Imaginary Number
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?
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?
Labels:
Bloomsburg,
imaginary,
impossibility,
number,
PA,
Richard Brook,
River Poets,
square root,
Susan Brook,
Vijay Seshadri
Friday, August 15, 2014
My best dream is floating . . .
Today I want to urge you to visit several sites in addition to my blog. For example, there is the recent announcement of 2014 Fields Medal (equivalent to a Nobel prize) winners -- the four winners include the first female mathematician (Maryam Mirzakhani) ever to be selected as a Fields Medalist (equivalent to a Nobel Prize) and a mathematician who loves poetry (Manjul Bhargava).
With the help of a "Google Alert" I found a YouTube video of Alexandria Marie reading "The Mathematics of Heartbreak" at a Dallas Poetry Slam. A link in an email from Texas computer scientist, Dylan Shell, alerted me to these mathematical lyrics (new words for old tunes) in a mathbabe posting by Cathy O'Neil.
As we have been floating from topic to topic, it may be apt to end with the final stanza of my relevantly titled poem:
With the help of a "Google Alert" I found a YouTube video of Alexandria Marie reading "The Mathematics of Heartbreak" at a Dallas Poetry Slam. A link in an email from Texas computer scientist, Dylan Shell, alerted me to these mathematical lyrics (new words for old tunes) in a mathbabe posting by Cathy O'Neil.
As we have been floating from topic to topic, it may be apt to end with the final stanza of my relevantly titled poem:
Labels:
Alexandria Marie,
Cathy O'Neil,
Fields Medal,
infinity,
Maryam Mirzakhani,
mathematics,
number,
poetry
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Looking back . . .
I have been visiting my hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania and not finding time to complete a new post -- and so I have looked back. On July 9, 2010 I offered a sonnet by Australian poet Jordie Albiston that begins with these lines:
math (after)
first you get the number-rush as anyone
might do you watch your world turn to
nought put your foot upon the path re
what cannot be said I’ve heard before
. . .
I invite you to go to the original post and read the rest.
math (after)
first you get the number-rush as anyone
might do you watch your world turn to
nought put your foot upon the path re
what cannot be said I’ve heard before
. . .
I invite you to go to the original post and read the rest.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Of all geometries, feathery is best . . .
The title for this post comes from Twinzilla (The Word Works, 2014), by Charleston poet Barbara Hagerty. The title character of this collection is one of several poetic personalities that inhabit Hagerty's verse, and she offers a playful view of life's dualities -- sometimes versed in mathematical terminology. Here's a sample.
Twinzilla Cautions * by Barbara G. S. Hagerty
Do not accept packages from unknown persons.
Beware non-native strangers who may be concealing
hazardous contraband "down there."
Question algebra. Dismantle thoughts traveling
the brain's baggage carousel in parabolas.
Twinzilla Cautions * by Barbara G. S. Hagerty
Do not accept packages from unknown persons.
Beware non-native strangers who may be concealing
hazardous contraband "down there."
Question algebra. Dismantle thoughts traveling
the brain's baggage carousel in parabolas.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Three thousand, and two
Here is a small poem richly vivid with the contrasts of opposites:
beside a stone three
thousand years old: two
red poppies of today
by Christine M. Krishnasami, India, found in This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from around the World (selected by Naomi Shihab Nye, Aladdin Paperbacks, 1996).
beside a stone three
thousand years old: two
red poppies of today
by Christine M. Krishnasami, India, found in This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from around the World (selected by Naomi Shihab Nye, Aladdin Paperbacks, 1996).
Friday, May 30, 2014
Squirrel Arithmetic
My maternal grandfather, James Edgar Black (1871-1931) was a western Pennsylvanian, a carpenter, and a man I never knew. But Ed, one of my cousins, found among our grandfather's long-stored things a scrapbook of collected poems and other miscellany that he recently passed on to me.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Math rap
Harry Baker is a Slam Champion who studies Maths at Bristol University, UK -- and his poetry sometimes features math, often having fun with the topic. His web page has a link to a rap about maths and at the JMM reading in Boston in 2012, Baker submitted this rap, 59 (a love story, now on YouTube), for presentation that evening.
Monday, April 21, 2014
A Cento from Arcadia
Last week I had the enjoyable privilege of visiting with mathematician-poet Marion Cohen's math-lit class, "Truth and Beauty" at Arcadia University -- and the class members helped me to compose a Cento (given below), a poem to which each of us contributed a line or two of poetry-with-mathematics. Participants, in addition to Dr. Cohen and me, included these students:
Theresa, Deanna, Ian, Collin, Mary, Grace, Zahra, Jen, Jenna,
Nataliya, Adeline, Quincy, Van, Alyssa, Samantha, Alexis, Austin.
Big thanks to all!
Theresa, Deanna, Ian, Collin, Mary, Grace, Zahra, Jen, Jenna,
Nataliya, Adeline, Quincy, Van, Alyssa, Samantha, Alexis, Austin.
Big thanks to all!
Friday, January 3, 2014
Count what counts
When I visited Iceland last month, I looked in the bookstores of Reykjavik for bilingual (Icelandic-English) poetry collections; I found none. I did, however, acquire a copy of The Sayings of the Vikings (Gudrun Publishing, 1992), a translation by Bjorn Jonasson of Hávamál -- "sayings of the high one" -- from the Poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poems from the Viking era and attributed to Odin. Here are several samples that involve number or measurement:
The Nature of Hospitality
I would be invited
everywhere
if I needn't eat at all.
The Nature of Hospitality
I would be invited
everywhere
if I needn't eat at all.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
The angel of numbers . . .
This poem by Hanns Cibulka (1920 - 2004) -- translated from the German by Ewald Osers -- is collected in the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics, edited by Sarah Glaz and me (A K Peters, 2008).
Mathematics by Hanns Cibulka (trans. Ewald Osers)
And the angel of numbers
is flying
from 1 to 2...
—Rafael Alberti
Mathematics by Hanns Cibulka (trans. Ewald Osers)
And the angel of numbers
is flying
from 1 to 2...
—Rafael Alberti
Friday, December 20, 2013
Measuring Winter
Thomas Campion (1567-1620) was an English composer, physician, and poet. I found this poem at poetryfoundation.org.
Now Winter Nights Enlarge by Thomas Campion
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Now Winter Nights Enlarge by Thomas Campion
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
13 lads of Christmas
In addition to waterfalls and geysers and the Aurora, Iceland has outstanding museums. On the morning of December 10, I visited the National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik -- and enjoyed a careful introduction to the history of this fascinating and friendly nation. Something I missed, however, was seeing one of the 13 Yuletide Lads that are an Icelandic tradition and who visit the Museum one-by-one on the 13 days before Christmas, each wearing
traditional costume and trying to pilfer the goodies he
likes best.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Conversational mathematics
In recent weeks I have been experimenting with poems that use mathematical terminology, wondering whether -- since there are readers who are undaunted by unknown literary references (to Dante's Divine Comedy or Eliot's Prufrock, for example) -- some readers will relish a poem with unexplained mathematical connections. In this vein I have offered "Love" (posted on on November 5) and now give the following poem, "Small Powers of Eleven are Palindromes":
Labels:
Catalan,
cube,
irrational,
JoAnne Growney,
language,
mathematics,
number,
palindrome,
perfect,
poem,
power,
twin primes
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Neruda speaks of numeration
The collection, Late and Posthumous Poems, 1968-1974 (Grove Press, 1988) by Chilean Nobelist Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) offers to readers a collection of Neruda's later work, ably translated by Ben Belitt. Here is a poem that explores the vast world opened by the invention of numeration.
28325674549 by Pablo Neruda
A hand made the number.
It joined one little stone
to another, one thunderclap
to another,
one fallen eagle
to another, one
arrowhead to another,
and then with the patience of granite
the hand
made a double incision, two wounds,
and two grooves: and a
number was born.
28325674549 by Pablo Neruda
A hand made the number.
It joined one little stone
to another, one thunderclap
to another,
one fallen eagle
to another, one
arrowhead to another,
and then with the patience of granite
the hand
made a double incision, two wounds,
and two grooves: and a
number was born.
Labels:
counting,
number,
numeral,
numeration,
Pablo Neruda,
poem
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Two-line poems -- Landays -- from Afghanistan
Celebrate Activist Poetry -- At Nov. 1 Event
BE THERE on November 1, 2013 at the Goethe-Intitut in Washington DC when poet and journalist Eliza Griswold is honored with the Split this Rock Freedom Plow Award (register here for this important event) for Poetry and Activism for her work collecting and introducing the folk poems of Afghan women to America. The June issue of Poetry Magazine is entirely dedicated to landays -- two-line poems by Afghan women that capture dark, funny, and revealing moments that few outsiders ever witness. (Edited and introduced by Griswold, the poems are magnificently supplemented by photographs by Seamus Murphy.)
Here are three landays from Griswold's Poetry collection, each selected for inclusion here because it includes at least one number:
Labels:
Afghan,
Eliza Griswold,
Freedom Plow Award,
landay,
number,
poem,
Poetry Foundation,
Split This Rock
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)