Showing posts sorted by relevance for query carl sandburg. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query carl sandburg. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Free vs Constraints -- Sandburg - Frost
One of the delights of investigation -- in library books or on the internet or walking about in the world -- is that one bit of information opens doors to lots of others. And so, as I was learning about Eleanor Graham for Monday's posting, I found her essay entitled "The first time I saw Carl Sandburg he didn't see me" and was reminded in a new way of the ongoing debate about the value of formal constraints in poetry.
Labels:
Carl Sandburg,
constraint,
Eleanor Graham Vance,
free verse,
mathematics,
poetry,
Robert Frost,
tennis
Monday, April 27, 2020
National Poem-in-your-Pocket Day -- April 30, 2020
The following stanza by award-winning children's author, Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, (1914-2000), has led to an annual celebration in US schools of "Poem-in-your-Pocket" Day:
Keep a poem in your pocket
and a picture in your head
and you'll never feel lonely
at night when you're in bed.
This year's Poem-in-your-Pocket Day will be celebrated on Thursday, April 30. Here is a link to "Counting and Math Rhymes" -- a website that offers a variety of choices for young people's pockets. My own pocket -- and my mind, during these days of pandemic confusion -- will be holding lines from Carl Sandburg's "Arithmetic":
Keep a poem in your pocket
and a picture in your head
and you'll never feel lonely
at night when you're in bed.
This year's Poem-in-your-Pocket Day will be celebrated on Thursday, April 30. Here is a link to "Counting and Math Rhymes" -- a website that offers a variety of choices for young people's pockets. My own pocket -- and my mind, during these days of pandemic confusion -- will be holding lines from Carl Sandburg's "Arithmetic":
Labels:
Beatrice Schenk de Regniers,
Carl Sandburg
Monday, April 15, 2019
If I had a million lives to live . . .
This posting features Carl Sandburg's "Humdrum," a poem that reflects on "million." (This poem and others by Sandburg may be found online at poets.org -- at this vast resource-site also is a collection of poems with math-themes.) For me, Sandburg was the poet who introduced the idea that lines can be poetic without having rhyme. (This link leads to several of my previous Sandburg-postings.)
Humdrum by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
If I had a million lives to live
and a million deaths to die
in a million humdrum worlds,
I’d like to change my name
and have a new house number to go by
Humdrum by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
If I had a million lives to live
and a million deaths to die
in a million humdrum worlds,
I’d like to change my name
and have a new house number to go by
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
A Prayer of Numbers
Whether our language is music or mathematics, computer code or cookery -- as we learn to love the language and treat it with good care, we find poetry. Because mathematics is a concise language, with emphasis on placing the best words in the best order, it often is described by mathematicians and scientists as poetry. Alternatively, and more accessible to most readers than poetic mathematics, we find verses by poets who include the objects and terminology of mathematics in their lines.
One of my favorite poems of numbers is the portrait "Number Man," by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), found in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, 2003). This poem also appears in Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters, 2008) -- a varied collection of math-related poems edited by Sarah Glaz and me.
Number Man by Carl Sandburg
(for the ghost of Johann Sebastian Bach)
He was born to wonder about numbers.
Labels:
add,
Carl Sandburg,
count,
JoAnne Growney,
Johann Sebastian Bach,
mathematics,
numbers,
poem,
poetry,
Sarah Glaz,
Strange Attractors
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
I am THANKFUL for . . . mathematics, poetry . . .
Today as I am preparing for Thanksgiving -- with its guests and travel and remembering -- my thoughts have turned back to Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), one of the first American poets whose work I came to know and love. Here are several lines from Sandburg's "Arithmetic":
from Arithmetic by Carl Sandburg
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won. . . .
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. . . .
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
better in arithmetic, you or your mother?
Sandburg's complete poem is available here. And this link leads to previous postings in this blog of work by Sandburg that has math connections.
from Arithmetic by Carl Sandburg
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won. . . .
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. . . .
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
better in arithmetic, you or your mother?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Sandburg's complete poem is available here. And this link leads to previous postings in this blog of work by Sandburg that has math connections.
Monday, August 17, 2020
Heart Arithmetic
During these days of protest and politics and pandemic, a diversion -- some playful thoughts about LOVE from poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967).
How Much? by Carl Sandburg
How much do you love me, a million bushels?
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.
And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel?
To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel.
And is this your heart arithmetic?
This is the way the wind measures the weather.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The wind, counting
Who can ever forget
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?
Labels:
Carl Sandburg,
counting,
poem,
poetry,
wind
Friday, May 16, 2014
Pound on poetry and mathematics
HERE at PoetryFoundation.org we find an article by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), published in POETRY Magazine in 1916, in which Sandburg offers highest praise to poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972). Sandburg includes this quote from a 1910 essay by Pound that connects poetry and mathematics.
The complete article is available here.
And, in a footnote* to the poem "In a Station of the Metro" -- found in my Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry we find a bit more of Pound's mathematical thinking.
"Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations,
not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres and the like, but equations
for the human emotions. If one have a mind which inclines to magic
rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations
as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite."
The complete article is available here.
And, in a footnote* to the poem "In a Station of the Metro" -- found in my Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry we find a bit more of Pound's mathematical thinking.
Labels:
abstract,
Carl Sandburg,
equation,
Ezra Pound,
figure,
mathematics,
Metro,
poetry,
sphere,
triangle
Monday, October 15, 2018
Can numbers be a bridge to understanding. . . ?
Fifty-Fifty by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
What is there for us two
to split fifty-fifty,
to go halvers on?
A Bible, a deck of cards?
a farm, a frying pan?
a porch, front steps to sit on?
How can we be pals
when you speak English
and I speak English
and you never understand me
and I never understand you?
This poem is on my shelf in Sandburg's collection, Honey and Salt (Harcourt, Brace; 1963).
Thursday, May 18, 2017
"Mathematics" & "Poetry" in the same sentence!
Thanks to Google for helping me find things -- for example, this quote from Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun :
Poetry is a form of mathematics,
a highly rigorous relationship with words.
And this quote from American poet Carl Sandburg (1872-1962):
Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks,
waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.
Poetry is a form of mathematics,
a highly rigorous relationship with words.
And this quote from American poet Carl Sandburg (1872-1962):
Poetry is a mystic, sensuous mathematics of fire, smoke-stacks,
waffles, pansies, people, and purple sunsets.
For more about Jelloun, here is a Wikipedia link.
This link leads to my 2012 posting of Sandburg's poem, "Number Man."
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Finding poems with "numbers"
Here's a quick and enjoyable activity:
Go to the website for The Poetry Foundation. Browse for a bit and, when you have completed your look-around, go to the search box toward the upper right and enter the word numbers, then click on the search button to bring a list of results. On that new page, go to the left column menu and click on Poems. Enjoy "Number Man" by Carl Sandburg and several other poems.
When your time permits, search using a second mathematical term, and a third. Bookmark the site. April is National Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month. Celebrate!
Go to the website for The Poetry Foundation. Browse for a bit and, when you have completed your look-around, go to the search box toward the upper right and enter the word numbers, then click on the search button to bring a list of results. On that new page, go to the left column menu and click on Poems. Enjoy "Number Man" by Carl Sandburg and several other poems.
When your time permits, search using a second mathematical term, and a third. Bookmark the site. April is National Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month. Celebrate!
Monday, April 26, 2010
Poems starring mathematicians - 3
Today's poems illustrate the satirical humor and rhyme that frequently inhabit poems by mathematicians. (Previous postings of poems about mathematicians include March 23, April 14, and April 15.)
I Even Know of a Mathematician by John L Drost
“I even know of a mathematician who slept with his wife only
on prime-numbered days…” Graham said.
―Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
I Even Know of a Mathematician by John L Drost
“I even know of a mathematician who slept with his wife only
on prime-numbered days…” Graham said.
―Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
Labels:
continua,
decimal,
discrete,
infinities,
irrational,
John Drost,
Keith Allen Daniels,
mathematician,
numbers,
pi,
primes,
Rankine,
Sandburg,
transcendental
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
This plane of earthly love
Poet Joan Mazza celebrates qualities mathematical:
To a Mathematician Lover by Joan Mazza
As we embark on this plane
of earthly love, I should explain,
my experiences with men
have doubled my troubles
and halved my pleasures,
divided my time into fractions
To a Mathematician Lover by Joan Mazza
As we embark on this plane
of earthly love, I should explain,
my experiences with men
have doubled my troubles
and halved my pleasures,
divided my time into fractions
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)