My friend Carol Ann Heckman has studied with Denise Levertov and feeds voraciously on her work. For many years I have loved Levertov's "The Secret" and today, rereading an email from Carol Ann, I went looking for a mathy poem by this beloved poet. I found the following -- with two numbers (and a hint of recursion):
The Mockingbird of Mockingbirds by Denise Levertov
A greyish bird
the size perhaps of two plump sparrows,
fallen in some field,
soon flattened, a dry
mess of feathers--
and no one knows
this was a prince among his kind,
virtuoso of virtuosos,
lord of a thousand songs,
debonair, elaborate in invention, fantasist,
rival of nightingales.
This poem rests on my bookshelf in Levertov's collection, Breathing the Water (New Directions, 1987).
Showing posts with label thousand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thousand. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Statistics -- math to improve man's lot
Today's poem honors nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) and is found in a fine poetry collection by Mary Alexandra Agner, The Scientific Method.
After Math by Mary Alexandra Agner
Florence Nightingale, 1820-1910
Worth one thousand words, usually,
but thousands dead
were inked as a colored nautilus
with chambers counting corpses
by disease or sword or bullet.
Hold this shell to your ear;
hear only your heartbeat's echo.
Numbers never had such voice
until Florence drew
coxcomb wedges for the dead.
Labels:
counting,
Florence Nightingale,
graph,
Mary Alexandra Agner,
math,
piechart,
plot,
poetry,
scientific method,
statistics,
thousand
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Teaching Numbers
Californian Gary Soto writes for both children and adults and much of his work suits both groups. Here from A Fire in My Hands (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) is "Teaching Numbers":
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