Poetry heard at JMM

In Boston on Friday evening, January 6, at the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meetings, these folks gathered and read -- for a delighted audience in Room 312 of Hynes Convention Center -- some poems of mathematics.
     Poets who submitted work in advance and were on the "Poetry with Mathematics" program included:
          Jacqueline Lapidus, Judith Johnson, Rosanna Iembo (accompanied by the violin of her daughter Irene Iaccarino), Charlotte Henderson, Carol Dorf (read by Elizabeth Langosy), Sandra Coleman, Marion Cohen, Tatiana Bonch (read by John Hiigli), Harry Baker (via video presented by reading organizer Gizem Karaali -- an editor of the online Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, which sponsored the the reading), and JoAnne Growney (also an organizer of the reading).
     Participants during an "open reading" included: 
          Mary Buchinger, Chris Caragianis, Rip Coleman, Seth Goldberg, Joshua Holden, Ann Perbohner, Pedro Poitevin, and Jason Samuels.

Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic

My introduction to French poet Guillevic (1909-97) came from UK poet Tim Love who found three of his triangle poems translated into Italian.  Jacqueline Lapidus translated them for me from French into English, after which I also found Guillevic's collection Geometries (Englished by Richard Sieburth, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) -- with its circles, ellipses, parallels, and so on.  And so, beyond these three, there will be more to enjoy later.  

Small Child, Loud Noise

Sent to me by poet Jacqueline Lapidus, I have this slightly mathy poem:

        The Screaming Toddler Ratio

The volume of the voice is in inverse proportion to the size of the speaker/screamer. When I hear that screech in a store, I follow it to the stroller, squat down to eye level in spite of knee, and whisper, "Are you the very small person who's making that GREAT BIG NOISE?" Invariably, the kid stops screaming and looks at me with an expression that says, how the hell did she know?" I smile at the toddler, the toddler smiles back. I stand up and explain basic math to the grateful parent. Short people know! (I'm 2" shorter than when we first connected, of course.) Teachers, too.

Previous mentions of work by Lapidus in this blog may be found at this link.

Numbers keep track of memories . . .

     Sometimes the specific nature of counting can help us, for a bit of time, to steer our thoughts for away from sadness.  Here is a poem in which numbers give a grieving partner a framework through which to speak.  (This selection is from The Widows' Handbook (Kent State University Press, 2014), an anthology gathered and edited by Jacqueline Lapidus and Lise Menn.)

      Camp Numbers     by Barbara Bald   

      I’ve been in these woods seven days,
      fed our fish twelve shrimp pellets,
      filled two hummingbird feeders with red juice,
      given our cat ten doses of pink medicine.

      I’ve live-trapped twenty-eight field mice
      with the Tin Cat trap you bought,
      rescued our Brittany’s toy four times from the river,
      seen one person, the gas man fixing the fridge, in two days.

      I’ve written thirteen poems,
      five about your untimely death,
      cleaned six cabinets to rid rodent remnants,
      replaced one roll of toilet paper in the outhouse.

      I am still waiting for one of you.

Learn more about poet and educator and nature-lover Barbara Bald here at her website.