When parallel lines meet, that is LOVE

Bernadette Turner teaches mathematics at Lincoln University in Missouri. And, via a long-ago email (lost for a while, and then found) she has offered this love poem enlivened by the terminology of geometry.

Parallel Lines Joined Forever    by Bernadette Turner

       We started out as just two parallel lines
       in the plane of life.
       I noticed your good points from afar,
       but always kept same distance.
       I assumed that you had not noticed me at all.  

Dimensions of Discovery

Along the one-dimensional straight line
there are points and segments
but no curves or squares.

In the flat plane of two dimensions 

there are points and segments 

and circles and squares.

In the vast space of three dimensions 
there are points and segments 
and squares and spheres.

In a space of four dimensions 

there is more than 

we can imagine.

Dimensions of a soul

In the poem below, Young Smith uses carefully precise terms of Euclidean geometry to create a vivid interior portrait.

     She Considers the Dimensions of Her Soul   by Young Smith

     The shape of her soul is a square.
     She knows this to be the case
     because she often feels its corners
     pressing sharp against the bone
     just under her shoulder blades
     and across the wings of her hips. 

Algebra cadabra

It was my good fortune to meet Colette Inez back in the early 1990s when she was poet-in-residence at Bucknell University. Then, as now, I was collecting poems-with-mathematics, and I have long loved this poem that weaves figuring into forests.

Forest Children     by Colette Inez

We heard swifts feeding in air,
sparrows ruffling dusty feathers,
a tapping on stones, mud, snow, pulp
when rain came down, the hiss of fire.
Counting bird eggs in a dome of twigs,
we heard trees fall and learned
to name them on a page for school. 

Averaging . . . geometry of the center

Perhaps partly due to his experience as an Air Force pilot during World War II,  Harold Nemerov (1920 - 1991) uses geometry with deft precision as he describes phenomena around him.  Here is a poem inspired by a 1986 news item.

Found Poem     by Howard Nemerov 

           after information received in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 4 v 86

The population center of the USA
Has shifted to Potosi, in Missouri.

The calculation employed by authorities
In arriving at this dislocation assumes

That the country is a geometric plane,
Perfectly flat, and that every citizen,

Four -- square, colors, theorem, poem

During my doctoral study days at the University of Oklahoma I knew several mathematicians who were working on graph theory problems -- and a couple of them worked on problems related to the Four Color Conjecture -- a conjecture (dating back to around 1850) that became a theorem in 1976 with a proof by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken verifying (using many hours of computer time).  It asserts that four colors are sufficient to color any plane map so that no pair of adjacent regions have the same color.  This theorem has been again on my mind since reading the obituary of Kenneth Appel, who died on April 19.
Here is a link to an earlier posting (5 November 2011) on the Four Color Problem with a poem by Frank Bernhart.  And here, repeated from that post, is my poetic version of the Four Color Theorem:

        F O U R
        F O U R
        F O U R
        F O U R

Geometry of a hawk's flight

One of the poets featured in the current Poetic Likeness Exhibit -- featuring photographs and paintings and sculptures of poets along with a few favorite lines -- at the National Portrait Gallery is Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989).   Although I hugely admire Warren's novel, All the King's Men, I am not very familiar with Warren as a poet.  The gallery posted, beside Warren's photo, a few lines about a hawk.  And I went searching online to find more.  The exhibit's quote was from Warren's "Mortal Limit" but my search led first to "Evening Hawk" -- with a first stanza bright with geometry;  I offer that stanza here.

Crocheting mathematics

Charlotte Henderson majored in mathematics and English at Wellesley College and has applied her dual interests as an editor for A K Peters, Ltd (a science and technology publisher that is now part of CRC Press).  Several manuscripts on which she has worked at A K Peters have drawn her to the connections between mathematics and art, including needlework. She is particularly interested in the diverse possibilities of crochet, which she learned after working on Daina Taimina's book, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes.   Charlotte has turned this interest into art and into a poem: 

I have dreamed geometry

   Descartes     by Jorge Luis Borges

   I am the only man on earth, but perhaps there is neither earth nor man.
   Perhaps a god is deceiving me.
   Perhaps a god has sentenced me to time, that lasting illusion.
   I dream the moon and I dream my eyes perceiving the moon.
   I have dreamed the morning and evening of the first day.

A poetic perspective on algebra

     Last Monday (April 4), the Washington Post had an article concerning the value of Algebra II  as a predictor of college and work success.  Since then I have heard numerous successful people point out that they did not have the cited course.   Also on April 4, NPR had a feature on the advantages of being bilingual.   My own mind joined these two stories --  for me, algebra is a second language and has enabled my learning of lots of other things.
     Colette Inez 's poem "Forest Children" uses the language of poetry to speak of algebra (and of her concern for shrinking woodlands).

Romanian poets -- Cassian and Barbu

Born in 1924, in Galati, Romania, Nina Cassian has published over fifty books -- besides poetry, she has works of fiction and books for children. Since 1985 she has lived in exile in the United States. Among those Cassian credits with strong influences on her poetry is mathematician / poet Dan Barbilian / Ion Barbu (1895-1961).  This poem by Cassian illustrates those mathematical influences:

Writing poetry like mathematics

In an article about the Chilean mathematician and poet Nicanor Parra, Paul M Pearson says, :  "Parra almost wrote poetry like he would a mathematical theorem using an extreme 'economy of language' with 'no metaphors, no literary figures.' "  Today I present work by Nicanor Parra and Richard Aston, both of whom write their poetry with the same economy and care that are used when writing mathematics.

Art, poetry, and mathematics -- and Rafael Alberti

On September 23 I was privileged to hear Annalisa Crannell, mathematics professor at Lancaster's Franklin and Marshall College, speak on "Math and Art:  the Good, the Bad, and the Pretty."  This informative presentation, sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and pitched toward undergraduates, showed ways that artists use mathematics.