Counting to seventy . . .

    I am exited by last week's news that Oklahoma poet-- and member of the Muskogee Nation -- Joy Harjo has been appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.  Harjo came to poetry via music and she sees in poetry a way of making connections and building understanding.  
     Struggling through complexity to understanding is a similarity between poetry and mathematics. Beyond that basic connection, however, Harjo's poetry is not closely linked to mathematics.  EXCEPT:  One of her poems (found online at PoetryFoundation.org) follows a strict syllable count.  In a birthday tribute to a friend who has turned seventy, Harjo has produced a seventy-line poem in which the syllable counts proceed as 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . , 69, 70. (In the terminology of OULIPO, Harjo has produced a growth-only snowball.)   Here are the opening lines of Harjo's poem:

from Becoming Seventy     by Joy Harjo

                    Knoxville, December 27, 2016, for Marilyn Kallet’s 70th birthday.

                    This poem was constructed to carry any memory you want to hold close.

     We
     arrived
     when the days
     grew legs of night.  

November is Native American Heritage Month

      Today, the day after Thanksgiving, is Native American Heritage Day -- a November event that was proclaimed in 2009 by President Obama and is part of Native American Indian Heritage Month (established in 1990 by President Bush.)  The disregard with which native Americans have been treated over many years has created huge wounds that will take long to heal.  Both mathematics and poetry can help to support justice and truth!  At present, the US Poet Laureate is Joy Harjo of the Muskogee Nation -- and Harjo is active in using the educational and healing powers of poetry.   Here is a link to some lines from Harjo's "Becoming Seventy" -- posted in this blog back in 2019.

     The website Poets.org helps us to celebrate Native American Heritage Month with a collection of poetic resources found at this link.  One of the poems offered -- which makes effective use of numbers in describing difficult situations -- is "Housing Conditions of One Hundred Fifty Chippewa Families" by Kimberly Blaeser.  I offer a few lines of that poem below -- followed by a link to the entire poem. 

Celebrating Women who write Mathy Poems

       Now in March -- in Women's History Month -- many writers are taking a bit of extra time to explore the history and achievements of women.  It was my delight to find a March 6 posting here on the Poetry Blogging Network with a list of celebrated women in poetry that includes several writers of mathy poems.  Of the ten poets listed, the following five have been included in this blog -- in earlier postings.  For each, I include a mathy sample and the poet's name is linked to earlier postings that include their work.

     Adrienne Rich   from Planetarium 

             a woman      ‘in the snow     
             among the Clocks and instruments              
             or measuring the ground with poles  

            in her 98 years to discover    
            8 comets

Split This Rock 2014

     Plan now to attend the 4th national biennial Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness in Washington, DC, March 27-30, 2014.  The sixteen poets to be featured at the 2014 festival are:  Sheila Black, Franny Choi, Eduardo C. Corral, Gayle Danley, Natalie Diaz, Joy Harjo, Maria Melendez Kelson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dunya Mikhail, Shailja Patel, Wang Ping, Claudia Rankine, Tim Seibles, Myra Sklarew, Danez Smith, and Anne Waldman.   The website SplitThisRock.org offers photographs and more information about the festival.  It will be awesome!  

Gather in Poems

 Gather in Poems -- a sort of Thanksgiving

     Last evening I attended a lovely virtual reading, "Gather in Poems," sponsored by the Academy of American Poets (advertised on Facebook) and moderated by  US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo.  One of the readers was a student poet -- high school junior Ethan Wang -- who shared a science-inspired poem by Rosebud Ben-Oni entitled "So They Say--They Finally Nailed--the Proton's Size--& Hope--Dies."  Here are a few lines from the poem -- and the entire poem may be found here.

. . .    I don’t believe hope dies
         just because old measurements got it
         wrong & there are no secret lives
         between protons & muons
         that cause the former to change
         in size,
         silencing all the music
         that drives us
         toward mystery
         rather than discovery.       . . .

One of the delightful--and free--services of the Academy of American Poets is free email delivery of "A Poem a Day."  Sign up here at https://poets.org.