Art / Poem / Numbers (posted 7/14/13, then lost)

     Recently I discovered a typo in my posting on July 14, 2013 of "Poem 25" by Kurt Schwitters.  My attempt to fix my typo led to accidental deletion of that post and so, I offer again this diagram-poem.  The poem -- IS THIS REALLY A POEM? --  appears in Numerals: 1924 - 1977 -- gathered by Yale Professor of Art History Rainer Crone (1942-2016), published 1978 by the Yale University Art Gallery. 

Poem 25 (elementary)     by Kurt Schwitters, 1923

A final comment -- when I read this "poem" aloud, I like the sounds of the words!

How Old Is the Rose-Red City?

     Most of Martin Gardner's fans are avid puzzler's -- my connection with him is also one of admiration (he was a thoughtful person who was a master at making connections among disparate things) but we are connected via poetry, including topics such as counting all possible rhyme schemes for a given stanza and the constraint-based poetry of OULIPO . . ..
     Gardner (1914-2010) was not a poet -- although he penned a quatrain or two, his great contribution was collecting and publicizing parodies and puzzle-verses by others.  Here is a link to Gardner's collection of poetic parodies, and here is a link to many of Gardner's puzzles, including the stanza below, "How Old is the Rose-Red City?" 

Axiom: A Mathematics of Poetry

Today in a Facebook posting by Susanne Pumpluen

 I learned of Discov-her, an online journal 

featuring stories about women in Science. 

* * *

     The following poetry offering is by Richard Smyth who has written a parody of an introduction to the mathematics of logic (specifically Laws of Form by G Spencer Brown*, Julian Press, 1972).  Smyth founded Anabiosis Press which offers the poetry journal Albatross and which has now evolved into Anabiosis Online.  
     I invite you to enjoy this play of words and ideas:

AXIOM: A MATHEMATICS OF POETRY     by Richard Smyth

It shall be taken as given the idea of infinition. The idea of infinition stands in direct opposition to the idea of definition.

Definition
     Infinition is the act of making indefinite or unclear. That is to say, while some uses of language attempt to clarify, others attempt to obfuscate.

Construction
     Make a poem.  

Encouragement from fathers

     It was my observation as a professor in a mostly-male mathematics department that the men who joined me in supporting opportunities for women were fathers of daughters.  They had come to see the world from a new perspective -- and saw that it needed changing.  Somewhat along these lines was a recent Washington POST article that told of recent research findings about socially responsible behavior from CEO's with daughters.
      With these thoughts in mind I started counting words . . . wanting to form a poem:

It is clear that . . .

     "If I stand"     by Inger Christensen  (Denmark, 1935-2009)

               If I stand
               alone in the snow
               it is clear
               that I am a clock

               how else would eternity
               find its way around                

Translated from the Danish by Susannah Nied

Artificial Intelligence in the Library . . .

     Libraries are wonderful places and library book sales are temptations impossible to resist -- and so, during a recent trip to Boston and exploration of the historic public library buildings on Boylston Street, I purchased a copy of Living Proof  (Florida International University Press, 1985) by Edmund Skellings (1932-2012).  Born in Boston and a poet laureate of Florida, Skellings was a pioneer in the application of computers to the arts and humanities.  The word "proof" in his title was enough to make me pick up the book and I have relished the opportunity to turn up memories of a long ago graduate course in AI while reading this poem:

Artificial Intelligence     by Edmund Skellings

Euclid rolled over in his bones
When Newell & Simon instructed
Their machine to look for new proof
For bisecting the ordinary triangle.   

C K Williams -- Three Mile Island

A poet whose work I have long enjoyed, C K Williams  (1936-1915), died a few days ago.  (You may find a generous sample of his poems online -- for example at PoetryFoundation.org and Poets.org.)  Williams is a poet whose writing does not tend toward mathematics but his very fine poem "Tar" (about the Three Mile Island nuclear plant crisis of 1979, a year when I lived in Pennsylvania not far away) has a few numbers.  I present below the first stanza of  "Tar" and, beneath it, a link to the rest of the poem.

from   Tar        by C. K. Williams

The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, 
       uncertain, mystifying hours.    

It starts with counting . . .

Mathematical imagery is one of the many features I enjoy in the work of Canadian environmental scientist and poet Madhur Anand.  Here is a sample from her new collection (A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes).
 

Background:  In an experiment designed to test the truth of a given statement 

(often called the null hypothesis), a Type I error occurs if the experiment results in a true hypothesis 
being rejected (a "false positive") and a Type II error occurs if a false hypothesis is accepted. 

Type One Error     by Madhur Anand

I avoid news, talk to strangers, walk around the block
a thousand times and toss nickels for random samples.
I still get a few false positives.  I'm fine.  It's good. 

Mathematical Modeling

My friend and colleague, University of Connecticut mathematician Sarah Glaz, is an accomplished poet and is active in coordinating math-poetry activities -- via her website, the annual BRIDGES Conference, the anthology Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics . . . .  Here is one of her mathy poems -- this one a pantoum, first published in London Grip.

Mathematical Modelling     by Sarah Glaz

Mathematical modelling may be viewed
As an organizing principle
That enables us to handle
A vast array of information      

MatHEmatics / MatSHEmatics

     Last week at the 2015 BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference in Baltimore I gave a short talk on using poetry to celebrate and inspire math girls and women, to recognize achievements and to encourage speaking out -- and also to encourage staying and building community in what often is now a lonely field.  Through a poem we can open doors that help us to talk about difficult issues -- such as isolation or loneliness or misgivings or discrimination. 
     A time-clock at BRIDGES kept me from saying all that I would have wished --  I would like to have quoted the following lines, spoken by a girl and found in "Hanging Fire" by Caribbean-American poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992).

from   Hanging Fire      by Audre Lorde 

          Nobody even stops to think
          about my side of it
          I should have been on the Math Team
          my marks were better than his . . .  

The culture for women in math and the sciences

Perhaps the phrase "ordinary" women scientists is an oxymoron -- but it should not be.  Women should be free to populate the full range of aspiration and dedication to science or any other profession.   In this spirit, I offer below the opening lines of a thought-provoking poem, "Ordinary Women Scientists," by science writer and poet Mary Alexandra Agner, from the excellent and important anthology Raising Lilly Ledbetter:  Women Poets Occupy the Workspace.

     Here are links to several recent items about math-women:

This link leads to a young mathematician's view of being "a female role model."

Here is a report of a panel at Harvard discussing roles of women in mathematics. 

Here is a link to the Women in Maths Facebook page where visitors 

may post information and offer support for math women.

This link leads to my poem celebrating Emmy Noether.  Here we celebrate Caroline Herschel.

Here at mathblogging.org is a place to find all sorts of math-links.

     from    Ordinary Women Scientists          by Mary Alexandra Agner       
                                                                                      for R.C.
      leave the lab late, flasks washed and waiting,
      computer on an overnight crunch job,
      warm dinner in the microwave
      while wondering at excited water molecules,
      wave their kids goodnight, grateful    

Terror/Mathematics

Several friends have sent me links to the poem "Terror/Mathematics" by Zeina Hashem Beck -- written after the beheading of 21 Christian Egyptians in Libya in February 2015 and published online here in One Throne Magazine.  To illustrate the style (with some mathematical symbols) and the power of the poem I offer the first couple of stanzas below -- and invite you to go to the One Throne website for all seven stanzas.

from   Terror/Mathematics     by Zeina Hashem Beck

                   After the beheading of 21 Christian Egyptians in Libya, February 2015

Try calculated, think math.
Capture and + the numbers,
- the Muslims.  21 is what you are

left with, which is 3 x 7.  Any multiple of 3
is blasphemous, is  √all evil,
and we will / its neck open. 

Islam is an X
in an equation we never    . . .                  (You may go here for the rest . . . )
 

A Voice Meant to be Spoken

     Last month the Library of Congress named a new poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, a Californian and Mexican-American whose work often involves oral performance  - as in “187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border,” (City Lights, 2007).  As I have learned about this poet I have found that I identify with his process,  "I write while I’m walking, on little scraps of paper,” he said.  (Wasn't walking also a writing strategy for William Wordsworth?)
     When I am introduced to the work of a new poet it has become my custom not only to enjoy her or his work but also to look for the ways that she or he uses mathematics.  The following poem is found, along with others by Herrera, at  Poets.org.   

Square stanzas for Women in Maths

Women

in Maths --

it all

adds up.

     Go here for "It All Adds Up" -- a story in plus Magazine by Rachel Thomas about the recent Women in Maths conference sponsored by the London Mathematical Society.

     And if you know of POEMS that celebrate women in mathematics, please contact me (email address at bottom of blog) or post a link in the comments to this post.

Add and subtract to get . . . a minimalist poem

Thinking today of poet Bob Grumman (1941-2015) with special gratitude for the way he expanded my poetic horizons.  For example, he introduced me to this addition-subtraction minimalist poem by LeRoy Gorman -- called "the day":

                          un + s = up;
                          up - s = un.

More information about Gorman and several more poetry samples are available here.

Stars and men revolve in a cycle . . .

In a book-discussion group in which I participate, we are reading some of the short fiction of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) and that reading has provoked me to dive again into my copy of his Selected Poems (Ed. Alexander Coleman, Penguin, 1999).  Here is one of Borges' poems that uses terminology from mathematics:

The Cyclical Night     by Jorge Luis Borges
                                             tr. Alistair Reid (1926-2014)
          to Sylvina Bullrich

 They knew it, the fervent pupils of Pythagoras:
 That stars and men revolve in a cycle,
 That fateful atoms will bring back the vital
 Gold Aphrodite, Thebans, and agoras. 

Include Arts in STEM -- and have STEAM !

Welcome to this blog where we support STEAM !

Visit YouTube for

 math-student, performance-poet Harry Baker's 

"A love poem for lonely prime numbers"

A bit more about Harry Baker can be found in this May 23, 2014 posting. 
In May 2015 visit Takoma Park Community Center Galleries for a STEAM exhibit organized by visual artist and poetry-lover Shanthi Chandrasekar.

The problem of time

Californian Brenda Hillman is a poet whose work I like and admire.  In "Time Problem" she weaves prime numbers into a deft description of the dilemma of not enough time.

       Time Problem     by Brenda Hillman

       The problem
       of time.      Of there not being 
       enough of it.

       My girl came to the study
       and said Help me;
       I told her I had a time problem 
       which meant:
       I would die for you but I don’t have ten minutes. 
       Numbers hung in the math book 
       like motel coathangers. The Lean 
       Cuisine was burning

Similar, self-similar -- fractals, a poem

      In geometry two objects are said to be similar if they have the same shape --- which happens if their angles are the same size and occur in the same sequence. For example, any pair of triangles with angles 30, 60, and 90 degrees are similar; also, the lengths of pairs of corresponding sides of these triangles have the same ratio.
      A term used in the terminology of fractals is self-similarity: a self-similar object has exactly (or approximately) the same shape as a part of itself.  A variety of objects in the real world, such as ferns and coastlines, are approximately self-similar: parts of them show the same statistical properties at many scales. At the end of this post are a couple of diagrams that illustrate how a fractal may be developed.  But first, experience the generative beauty of self-similarity via a poem by Maryland poet Greg McBride.  Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010), quoted in McBride's epigraph, often is nicknamed "the father of fractals."

Celebrate Pi -- write in Pilish

On 3/14/15 many of us will celebrate  π - day; for those who like to gaze on the digits of  π,  one hundred thousand of them are available here.  In honor of this upcoming special day I have composed a small stanza in Pilish (the language whose word-lengths follow the digits of  π ). 

3.  1  4  

Get a list,

 1  5  

I shout,

   9  2  6  5  3  5