Precision leads to poetry . . .

As the year ends, a quote from one of my once-favorite authors, Don DeLillo (in correspondence with David Foster Wallace -- whose Infinite Jest is on my to-read list), earlier offered by Jordan Ellenberg in Quomodocumque.

Quoting DeLillo:

          Once, probably, I used to think that vagueness 
          was a loftier kind of poetry, truer 
          to the depths of consciousness, and maybe 
          when I started to read mathematics and science 

          back in the mid-70s I found an unexpected lyricism 
          in the necessarily precise language 
          that scientists tend to use. 
          My instinct, my superstition 
  
          is that the closer I see a thing 
          and the more accurately I describe it, 
          the better my chances of arriving 
          at a certain sensuality of expression.

And at the BrainyQuotes website is this quote (and many others) by DeLillo (and many others).

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Poems starring mathematicians - 4

Each of today's poems is in the voice of a student who looks back.  First, from Carol Dorf, a poem to the author of a book--written as a fan-letter, "Dear Ivar."   And then, for his hero (a special Grammar School teacher) by Czech poet and scientist Miroslav Holub (1923-98), "The Fraction Line."

       Dear Ivar,

       I read your book on the unexpected.

       Like most poets, I opposed mathematics

       when I was young, seeing it as the converse

       to feeling. The previous statement is false.