Caught in an infinite loop . . ..

Philadelphian Marion Cohen has been a mathematician since girlhood and a poet almost that long.  Besides her mathematics and writing, she teaches an interdisciplinary math-and-literature course at Arcadia University.  Here is a sample of Cohen's math poetry -- which imaginatively links mathematics to everyday life, sort of -- from her recent collection, Parables for a Rainy Day (Green Fuse Press, 2013).

Weirdness at 22nd and Walnut     by Marion D. Cohen    

Solving equations . . .

Although poets as long ago as Henry Lok (1553?-1608?), Elizabeth Tollett (1694-1854), and William Blake  (1757-1827) used mathematical imagery in their poems, the first collection of poetry-with-mathematics that I came to was Against Infinity:  An Anthology of Contemporary Mathematical Poetry (Primary Press, 1979), collected and edited by Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp.  This volume introduced me to poems I could use with my math students and one of my long-term favorites is "Algebra" by Linda Pastan who has, in turn, become one of my favorite poets. 

Is Algebra Necessary?

     Anticipating my interest, several friends sent me links to a late-July opinion piece in The New York Times entitled "Is Algebra Necessary?" (written by an emeritus political science professor, Andrew Hacker).   I more-or-less agree with Hacker that algebra is not necessary in most daily lives or places of employment.  In fact, years ago I developed a non-algebra text, Mathematics in Daily Life,  for a course designed to satisfy a math-literacy requirement at Bloomsburg University.  On the other hand, my own fluency in the language of algebra opened doors to calculus and to physics and so many other rooms of knowledge that I have loved.
     Expressing algebraic issues in verse, we have this thoughtful poem by Jeannine Hall Gailey, Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington (home of Microsoft). 

Variations of a line

In mathematics a line plays many roles -- as in this fine poem (which is a sonnet, more or less).

     Lines     by Martha Collins

     Draw a line. Write a line. There.
     Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
     between the lines is fine but don't
     turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
     or out, between two points of no
     return's a line of flight, between
     two points of view's a line of vision.