Light and laws, letters and numbers

     We viewers of the world see it through a variety of lenses -- for some of us music shapes our view, for others it is color, for others history; still others see through a lens of mathematics  -- perhaps geometry, or number, or randomization or . . .
     The Greek Nobelist (1979), poet, and essayist Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996) was once nicknamed "the sun-drinking poet" for views seen in The Axion Este / Worthy It Is.   A sample from this collection, "They Came," is offered below -- this poem is not only rich in the imagery of light but also pays tribute to geometry and numbers.   

Counting for Freedom -- the Amistad trials

     Josiah Willard Gibbs (Jr, 1839 – 1903) was an American scientist who made important theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics.  His father, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr (1790 - 1861) was an American linguist and theologian, who served as professor of sacred literature at Yale University.  Although the son is well-known in scientific circles, it is the father who interests us here -- he is the subject of a poem by New York poet Stephanie Strickland.
     The senior Gibbs was an active abolitionist and he played an important role in the Amistad trials of 1839–40. By visiting the African passengers in jail, he was able to learn to count to ten in their language, and he then searched until he located a sailor, James Covey, who recognized the words --the language was Mende -- and was able to serve as an interpreter for the Africans during their subsequent trial for mutiny. 

Worth of a horse

When my friend Kay and I visited the National Museum of the American Indian Museum in Washington last Wednesday, August 15, we particularly enjoyed the exhibit entitled "A Song for the Horse Nation." These displays explore the role of horses in Native American lives through stories and artifacts, through music and art.  Shown below is a photo of a sign that hangs in the exhibit.  I first intended to use the text on the sign -- with its many numbers -- as raw material for a poem.  But, as I have reviewed the sign since my visit -- including reading it aloud -- I have decided it is already a poem.  Here it is, for you:

Thirty and three

One of my poetry collections is a particular treasure because of its history.  My aunt, Ruth Margaret Simpson Robinson, graduated (as I also did) from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.  At Westminster, a Chi Omega sorority sister of Aunt Ruth was Eleanor Graham Vance (1908-1985) who became a teacher and a writer; one of her biographical sketches mentions that she wrote for both children and adults, seeing many similarities between them.  Aunt Ruth passed on to me her personally-inscribed copy of  Eleanor Graham's 1939  collection, For These Moments, and in it I have found a poem with a tiny bit of arithmetic. I offer it here to you. 

She had a way with numbers

In Letters from a Floating World, artist and poet Siv Cedering (1939-2007) has given us a poignant portrait of astronomer (and math-woman) Caroline Herschel:
 
Letter from Caroline Herschel (1750-1848)     by Siv Cedering

William is away, and I am minding

the heavens. I have discovered

eight new comets and three nebulae

never before seen by man,

and I am preparing an Index to

Flamsteed's observations, together with

a catalogue of 560 stars omitted from

the British Catalogue, plus a list of errata

in that publication. William says 

Counting the dead

This poem by Joan Mazza heightens the impact of war-data by bringing it into the kitchen and the office -- juxtaposing war-numbers with the events of a pleasant day in central Virginia.  

Numbers for the Week       by Joan Mazza

This morning, it was twenty-eight degrees. I photographed
red oak leaves rimed with frost. I made chicken soup, canned
ten pint jars in the pressure cooker at fifteen pounds of pressure
for seventy-five minutes. On the stump near the compost pile,
I left the skin of fourteen chicken thighs for crows and woodpeckers.  

Before calculators we did more counting!

One of many sources of good poetry online is American Life in Poetry, collected by former U S Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.  In Column 368, Kooser offers "Numbers" by New Jersey poet, Jared Harel (first published Fall 2010 in The Cold Mountain Review).  Kooser's introduction notes, "My mother kept a handwritten record of every cent she spent from the day she and my father were married until the day she died. So it’s no wonder I especially like this poem  . . . " 

Ode to Alan Turing

In this week of announcements in the US about evolving views concerning human sexual preferences, it seems fit to offer a second poem (see also May 9) honoring British code-breaker and computer scientist, Alan Turing (1912-1954).  Here is "Ode to Alan Turing"  by Saskatchewan poet, Mari-Lou Rowley. 

What do we do with these numbers?

During March 22-25, 2012 I participated in the Split This Rock Poetry Festival.  One of the fine poets I met there was Oregon poet and teacher, Ingrid Wendt.  Her poem, "Numbers" shows the dramatic impacts that numerical information may have.  It is time to count.  Time to help.  Time to do right.

   Numbers     by Ingrid Wendt

                    Poem ending with words by William Stafford

   Iris says there's safety in numbers, when

   someone else arrives to share the house she won't

   need to lock the door

   When did Iris last read the news? 

A Prayer of Numbers

     Whether our language is music or mathematics, computer code or cookery --  as we learn to love the language and treat it with good care, we find poetry.  Because mathematics is a concise language, with emphasis on placing the best words in the best order, it often is described by mathematicians and scientists as poetry.  Alternatively, and more accessible to most readers than poetic mathematics, we find verses by poets who include the objects and terminology of mathematics in their lines.

     One of my favorite poems of numbers is the portrait "Number Man," by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967),  found in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, 2003).  This poem also appears in Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters, 2008) -- a varied collection of math-related poems edited by Sarah Glaz and me.

     Number Man     by Carl Sandburg

          (for the ghost of Johann Sebastian Bach)

     He was born to wonder about numbers.

2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival -- March 22-25

Earlybird registration ends February 22 for the 2012 Split this Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, DC, March 22-25.  Honoring poet June Jordan, the four-day festival will feature more than a dozen noted poets whose work speaks out against indifference and injustice.  One of these is is Minnie Bruce Pratt -- and here is her "Someone is Up," one of the poems featured in the Spring 2012 issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal, published in support of the Split this Rock Festival and presenting work of festival poets.  As in many poems of provocation and witness, numbers provide the specifics that pin down the message.  (See also poetry by Festival Director Sarah Browning in the February 5 posting.)

Strength from Numbers

During March 22-25, 2012, the third Split This Rock Poetry Festival:  Poems of Provocation and Witness will be held in Washington, DC. This year's festival honors activist poet June Jordan (1936  - 2002) but the festival would not be happening without the vision and untiring efforts of DC poet Sarah Browning, Director of Split This Rock and DC Poets Against the War, and author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden.  Like any good protester, she makes effective use of the specificity of numbers in her poems.

Ruth Stone counts

It seemed as if she might write -- and write well -- forever.  But she did not.  Moreover, poems by award-winning poet Ruth Stone (1915-2011) are not celebrated for their use of mathematical imagery.  Still, she noticed numbers.  She counted.  As in "All in Time."  

Music on the hypotenuse

Dr. Cai Tianxin is a professor of mathematics (specializing in number theory) at Zhejiang University, China. He also is an accomplished and  well-known poet.

   The Number and the Rose     by Cai Tianxin 

Numbers from the Piano

     Of all of the things we might try to say when we sit down to write a poem, which are the ones we should choose?  Sometimes we may say what first occurs to us -- begin to write and keep going until we are done.  This may suffice -- or it may seem to lack care.  To be more careful, we might seek a pattern to follow:  perhaps we might form lines whose syllable-counts follow the Fibonacci numbers.   Or construct a sonnet -- fourteen lines with five heart-beats per line and some rhyme.  Or devise a scheme of our own.

How I won the raffle

Dannie Abse is a deservedly celebrated Welsh poet -- and before his retirement he was also  a physician.  I first saw "How I Won the Raffle" in Poetry  in 1992 -- now it also is included in his collection Be Seated Thou (Sheep Meadow Press, 2000).

   How I Won the Raffle     by Dannie Abse

   After I won the raffle with the number
   1079,
   the Master of Ceremonies asked me why,
   ‘Why did you select that particular number?’

A thousand and fifty-one waves

Twenty-five years ago I had an enormous appetite for poems by Stevie Smith (1902-1971).  I loved the way that they seemed so unstudied -- playful and yet spot on and profound.    Smith did not use much mathematics in her poetry, but she wrote this poem, "Numbers." 

Ancestry -- what counts

Etheridge Knight began writing poetry while an inmate at the Indiana State Prison and published his first collection, Poems from Prison, in 1968.  His poem "The Idea of Ancestry" shows us what a man in prison finds time to count:

   The Idea of Ancestry   by Etheridge Knight

          1
  
   Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
   faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand-
   fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
   cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare
   across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know
   their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style,
   they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me;
   they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.

Attitudes of Numbers

     I like Bruce Snider 's "The Certainty of Numbers" (which you may already have found online at The Poetry Foundation website, featured in the April 14  posting) even though I disagree with the initial attitude toward mathematics expressed by its narrator.  Writing a poem can be a voyage of discovery with the narrator's view flexing as the poem progresses.  
     Snider's poem brings to mind a view of mathematics that repeatedly bothers me:  I wonder why some people -- who would not complain about the fixendess of spellings of "cat" or "dog" or "sum" -- dislike mathematics for the so-called rigidity of  arithmetic facts such as "2 + 4 = 6."  ? ? ?

Finding poems with "numbers"

     Here's a quick and enjoyable activity:
     Go to the website for The Poetry Foundation.   Browse for a bit and, when you have completed your look-around, go to the search box toward the upper right and enter the word numbers, then click on the search button to bring a list of results.  On that new page, go to the left column menu and click on Poems.   Enjoy "Number Man" by Carl Sandburg and several other poems.
     When your time permits, search using a second mathematical term, and a third.  Bookmark the site.  April is National Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month.  Celebrate!