Two four-letter words that I want NEVER to be used TOGETHER are hate and math. A lively contradiction to my wish is provided by the following piece by slam poet Shappy Seasholtz.
scroll down to the bottom of this posting.)
21 Reasons Why I Hate Math by Shappy Seasholtz
1 - It's my worst subject.
2 - I failed Algebra in high school.
3 - When I retook Algebra in high school during the final exam the principal announced that the space shuttle had just blown up.
4 - The space shuttle probably blew up because of a mathematical error.
The mysteries of science are sometimes explored in poems and, in this vein, I was delighted to find "My Proteins" by Jane Hirshfield (a poet whose work I like and admire) on page 56 of the September 16, 2013 issue of The New Yorker. As she explores the riddles of who she is and where she came from, she has these lines-with-numbers (stanzas 3 and 4):
from My Proteins by Jane Hirshfield
Ninety percent of my cells, they have discovered,
are not my own person,
they are other beings inside me.
As ninety-six percent of my life is not my life.
. . .
Look for the entire poem; and enjoy!
Another exploration of what the self is and isn't may be found in Hirshfield's "My Skeleton" -- today's Poem-A-Day selection from Poets.org. Jane Hirshfield's poem "Mathematics" is available here in my post for 23 June 2010.
Virginia poet Bernadette Geyer has a new (2013) poetry book, The Scabbard of Her Throat -- and I have been exploring these engaging poems of family and fantasy. And finding among them this mathy poem, "Odds":
Odds by Bernadette Geyer
Eighty percent of all plane crashes occur in the first
three minutes or in the last minute of the flight.
The odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 18 million
but you can't win if you don't play. In Peru,
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