Celebrating winter with a Fibonacci poem

  Another year ends . . . may 2019 bring good numbers for us all!  

     Exercise -- especially jogging -- helps to channel my restless energy and allow me to be productive.  Here is a poem of jogging and the Fibonacci numbers.

Counting on a December morning     by JoAnne Growney

one chickadee, one squirrel
my own two feet left-right left-right on the soft track
around the soccer field three blocks from my home
sparkling bright against grey sky five crows alight
in the lacy spread of fractal branches of eight bare locust trees

when I am early morning’s first human to arrive at Shepherd Park
when I am first and the wind is gentle and the temperature
is not bitter cold
dozens of robins hop and flutter near me
as I plod some thirteen laps

smiling, maybe losing count
and loving my Fibonacci world

Thanks to mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz who has included this poem 

in the Bridges Stockholm 2018 Poetry Anthology.

A thoughtful Fibonacci poem

     An email message from Washington, DC poet and blogger Karren Alenier alerted me to this mathy Fibonacci poem found online in the Summer 2020 Issue (#36) of The Fib Review.  The poet., Roberto Christiano, has given me permission to offer it to you here.

the irrational   by Roberto Christiano

irrational
numbers
c'est moi?
a number that
cannot be expressed by the
ratio of two integers / and what's an integer?  

A(nother) blog that celebrates Math-and-Poetry

      Recently I have come to know another strong advocate of math-poetry connections.  Marian Christie (read about her here) has had longtime interest in both mathematics and poetry and her blog -- available at  https://marianchristiepoetry.net/ -- explores topics that include "Poetry and Fractals," "Poetry and Number Sequences,"  "Poetry and Permutations," . . . reflection symmetry and square poems and Fibonacci poems . . .. and lots more.  Allow yourself time to explore when you visit https://marianchristiepoetry.net/. 

     When I am working with a group of students are nervous about their ability to write a poem, I often start by asking them to write a Fib, because it starts with single syllables,  In her posting about Fibonacci poems, Christie offers this simple     example of how the Fib structure can lead you to a poem. 
               I
               like
               playing
               with patterns
               in crochet, music,
               poetry and mathematics.

If you are new to Fibs, try this CHALLENGE: using the same first two lines as Christie used above, create a Fibonacci poem.  And then another ... and another.

Looking back . . . to previous posts . . .

  BROWSE and ENJOY!

Back in January 2020 I gathered a list of titles of previous posts and posted it here at this link.  And below I offer titles of postings -- with links -- since that time.

And, if you are looking for a post on a particular topic,
you are invited to explore the SEARCH feature in the right-hand column
OR to browse the list of  Labels (also to the right) -- and click on ones that interest you.

 

TITLES OF POSTS (with links) 

June, 2021    

      Math Communication with Poetry -- Strogatz Prize

      One More Love Poem

      Interpreting Khayyam -- in Rhyme   

      Putting CALCULUS into a poem . . .  

      Images of a Complex World   

      Encryption and Love   

      Every Seventeen Years . . .   

      A Life Made to Count   

      A Few Lines of Parody   

      Euclid and Barbie -- and attitudes toward math . . .

 

May, 2021      

      A Mathy Rhyme from Twitter   

      A Rhymer and an Analyst -- a Friendship   

      What does CANCEL mean? -- some poetic wordplay!   

      MoMath Celebrates Limericks!  

      Reflecting on Pi . . .   

      Keeping Track of Chairs   

      Mathematical Forms in Poetry . . .  

      Mathy Jokes    

      Climate Concerns   

      Celebrate Math-Women -- Celebrate AWM  

Solving problems -- crimes and mathematics

     In childhood I loved novels that featured the girl-detective, Nancy Drew, and in adulthood I have continued to enjoy crime-solving fiction -- and have supposed that this is connected to my love of mathematics.  Recent news of the death of spy novelist John Le Carre (1931--December 12, 2020)  has stimulated my thinking about problem solvers and has led to this Fib:

        We 
        seek --  
        and find --
        truth that hides 
        in common views of  
        available information.

As you may already know, a "Fib" is a 6-line poem whose syllable counts match the first six Fibonacci numbers:  1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8.  This link leads to additional Fibonacci-poetry connections.

AWP avoids mathematics

I am currently attending the 2011 AWP* Conference and am disappointed that none of the sessions involves connections of writing with mathematics -- this disappointment has prodded me to write the Fib that I include below. (Recall that a Fib is a poem whose successive line-syllable counts follow the **Fibonacci seqence -- the numbers that count the petals on a flower, the spirals of seedheads on a pine cone or pineapple, and many other natural things.) 

Shaping Poems with Numbers

      Numerical patterns can help guide our minds and fingers to create poems -- and one of the patterns I like is the Fibonacci numbers -- a number sequence for which the first non-zero numbers are both 1, and each succeeding number is the sum of the two preceding numbers.

          1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, . . .

Formation of a six-line poem using the first 6 of these numbers as syllable-counts, gives a tiny poem that has been named a Fib.

For me, using these Fibonacci numbers  -- starting small and growing -- as syllable counts offers a nice structure for developing my thoughts around a particular topic.  I like it for myself (a couple examples below) and I suggest to my students when I am asking them to share their math-related viewpoints. 

   When                                                   When
   your                                                      your
   father                                                   mother
   is mathy                                               is mathy
   what are the chances                          what are the chances
   that interest is passed to you?           that interest is passed to you?

 These days I celebrate the fact that I have granddaughters who like math!

Sixty years is a long time . . ..

      Yesterday in my Honda, in heavy traffic -- driving to my present home in Silver Spring, MD from a high school reunion weekend in Indiana, PA -- my thoughts began to shape a poem.  Here, with thanks to Kathy Rend Armstrong and a host of other classmates who helped get a bunch of us together for a 60th reunion of the Indiana Joint High School Class of 1958.  Here is my brief poem.

     For readers unfamiliar with the Fibonacci numbers, here is a link to an explanation, and this link leads to other postings of Fibonacci poems in this blog.

Thankful for . ..

          Now
          I
          give thanks --
          for your grace
          and empathy, for
          mathematics and poetry.

     When I offer a poetry class to people new to writing, often the first poem I ask them to write is a Fib -- I give them a topic (such as "winter" or "Thanksgiving" or "gardening" or . . .) and ask them to write lines whose syllable-counts match the first six Fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8. Time and again these writers are pleased with the way that the numerical constraints shape their words into thoughtful meaning.
     This posting, "Poems with Fibonacci Number Patterns" offers more samples.  The six-line form (called a Fib and illustrated above) was invented in 2006 by Gregory Pincus.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Poetry at the Joint Mathematics Meetings

        During January 4-7, 2024, mathematics meetings were held in San Francisco, CA.  Although unable to attend, I have spent some time browsing abstracts of the presentations there and found several that involve poetry.  Suzanne Sumner of the University of Mary Washington, gave a presentation entitled "How Poetry Informs the History of Mathematics" and here is a link to the abstract for Sumner's presenation.

     From Sumner's abstract I learn that the ancient Sanskrit scholar Acharya Pingala was likely to have been the first to use Fibonacci numbers and Pascal's triangle in his poetry. Using this blog's SEARCH feature, I found this link to prior mentions of Fibonacci in this blog and this link to mentions of Pascal.

Counting words with the Fibonacci numbers . . .

Today a poem by New York poet, Larissa Shmailo,

that explores aging with word-counts that match the Fibonacci numbers.

    none

    1(one) 

    1(ego)  

    two (I)

    I 2 threeeeeeeeee

    5 school, ruled 2 three   

Exploring the truth with a FIB

     Recently I have been reconnected with British-Israeli mathematician-educator, Yossi Elran  (whom I met at a conference in Banff several years ago).  Elran is well known for his puzzle-book, Lewis Carroll's Cats And Rats... And Other Puzzles With Interesting Tails (World Scientific, 2021).  He is in the process of writing a sequel to this book and it will include some math-poetry; probably some Fibs (poems  -- often with just 6 lines -- with syllable-counts per line that follow the Fibonacci numbers).   Elran's recent email query about Fibs helped me to remember that I had one waiting to be posted, a Fib about missed opportunities and status for women.  Here is is:

Exploring the truth with a FIB        by JoAnne Growney

2000 plastic bags in the stomach of a camel!

     When creating a poem, I often find that first choosing a pattern of syllable counts can be very helpful in guiding me into careful word choices.  I have used the Fibonacci numbers as a guide to forming the following lines. Information for these lines has come from a frightening story by Marcus Eriksen  (March 23, 2021 in the Washington Post).   

Save
the
world from
plastics,  Now!
Don't allow more deaths
of desert camels, painful deaths
caused by eating humans' trash within its plastic bags --
chewed plastic not digestible --
causing ulcers and
lots of pain,
leading
to
death.

After a pair of 1's to start the sequence, each succeeding Fibonacci number is the sum of the preceding two numbers:  Above we have (climbing and then reversing):  1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1.

A blog posting written by ChatGPT 3.5

     For a long time I have been curious about what would result if I asked AI to write a blog post for me.  One day recently I signed in at https://chat.openai.com/ and was asked by ChatGPT 3.5,  "How can I help you today?"  Copied and pasted below is our conversation (copied from this link).  (I am disappointed that ChatGPT's respones did not, as my postings usually do, include a poem.)  Read -- and reflect!

I have a blog entitled "Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics" and I would like Chat GPT to write a blog posting for me.  

From ChatGPT: 

Title: Exploring the Symmetry of Numbers: A Mathematical Poetic Journey

Welcome back to "  Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics"! Today, let's delve into the captivating world where numbers and poetry intertwine, creating harmonies of symmetry and rhythm. Join me on this whimsical voyage where mathematical concepts dance with lyrical verses, inviting you to see the beauty in both.

In short words . . . a Fib for the New Year!

       I
       want
       to wish
       you a fine
       New Year:  play with words
       and time. Count each short word and line.

     One of the fascinating web-postings I have found recently is this one in which mathematical ideas are expressed in short words -- that is, in words of one syllable.  As you might expect, these creations are sometimes awkward and sometimes insightful.  I invite you to try, as I have done above, your own expression of ideas in short words.

     And if you'd like to find more examples of Fibs (that is, poems in which the syllable counts per line follow the Fibonacci numbers), this link leads to the results of a search of this blog using "Fib."

Remembering Thomas Schelling (1921-2016)

     On December 13, Nobel-prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling (b 1921) died.  I had the privilege of meeting this outstanding scholar in Cambridge, MA back in 1980 when I dropped by his office after hearing him lecture at the Kennedy School of Government.  I became very interested in his ideas of critical mass (found along with lots of other good stuff in Micromotives and Macrobehavior and eventually included the topic in a textbook that I wrote  for a liberal arts mathematics course, "Mathematical Thinking," that I helped to develop at Bloomsburg University.
     I want to honor Schelling with a poem, but . . .

        I
        can’t
        find a
        poem for
        Thomas Schelling – thus
        I am compelled to write this Fib.
        Thanks for thinking well, for sharing your keen thoughts with us. 

(Fibonacci Numbers:  1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 . . .)

Why is SHE less known? . . .

Sometimes matching words to a syllable-count helps to bring focus to my musings.  Here are two stanzas for which I used the Fibonacci numbers as lengths for the lines I built as I considered the continuing invisibility of most math-women. (I have some hope that the second of these is primarily remembering -- and is not true of family child-care today.)

8-5-3-2-1-1    A FIB

HE is famous but SHE is not.
Yet we once judged her
potential
greater
than
his.

Poetry-with-math in Baltimore -- 17 Jan 2014

At the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore (January 15-18, 2014), the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (under the leadership of editors Mark Huber and Gizem Karaali) will sponsor a poetry reading.  Mark your calendar now! (And be sure to scroll down past the reading announcement to poems from last year's JHM reading in San Diego by poets Katie Manning and Karen Morgan Ivy.)

 Friday,  January 17, 2014. 4:30 - 6:30 PM

 Room 308  Baltimore Convention Center  

From 2010 -- titles and dates of posts

List of postings  March 23 - December 31, 2010
A scroll through the 12 months of titles below may lead you to topics and poets/poems of interest. Also helpful may be the SEARCH box at the top of the right-hand column; there you may enter names or terms that you would like to find herein.
    Dec 31  The year ends -- and we go on . . .
    Dec 30  Mathematicians are NOT entitled to arrogance
    Dec 28  Teaching Numbers
    Dec 26  Where are the Women?
    Dec 21  A Square for the Season
    Dec 20  "M" is for Mathematics and . . .  

Storm Sandy -- and climate change

     That
     storm
     Sandy
     has caused more
     people to believe
     climate change is real and awful
     than the piles of statistics amassed by scientists --
     bad to worse since 1950  --
     ice caps melting, drought,
     sea levels
     rising.
     Oh,
     My!

This poem of mine, with its syllables counted by successive Fibonacci numbers, is a slight revision of one posted on 31 August 2012.  That earlier posting also links to climate change data and to other  FIBS.