Queneau and the Oulipo

Raymond Queneau was one of the leaders of a group of ten--primarily writers and mathematicians, primarily French--who founded a group, "Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle" ("Workshop of Potential Literature"), that eventually became known as the Oulipo. Queneau described potential literature as "the search for new forms and structures that may be used by writers in any way they see fit."

Include Arts in STEM -- and have STEAM !

Welcome to this blog where we support STEAM !

Visit YouTube for

 math-student, performance-poet Harry Baker's 

"A love poem for lonely prime numbers"

A bit more about Harry Baker can be found in this May 23, 2014 posting. 
In May 2015 visit Takoma Park Community Center Galleries for a STEAM exhibit organized by visual artist and poetry-lover Shanthi Chandrasekar.

Poetry and Protest

      One of the fine new anthologies of 2016 is Of Poetry and Protest:  From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, published by W W Norton -- put together by Phil Cushway (Compiler), Michael Warr (Editor), and Victoria Smith (Photographer).  Here, from that collection, are the opening stanzas of Marilyn Nelson's "Cells and Windows" -- a poem that gains much of its power from the awful truth conveyed by its numbers.
 
Cells and Windows          by Marilyn Nelson
             after work by neogeo painter Peter Halley   

Black men in their prime
working years, especially
those without a high school
diploma, are much more likely
to be in jail than white men are.
(a) true   (b) true    

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  

Julia . . . Set Aside Gender Roles . . .

       For me there is a special pleasure in finding in my reading a word like "identity" or "prime" that has a special mathematical meaning in addition to its ordinary usage.  And, because poets work hard to capture multiple images in their work, poems are where such pleasure occurs most often.  Poet and songwriter and professor Lawrence M. Lesser has beautifully connected the Julia Set of fractal geometry with his grandmother, Julia -- and he has given me permission to share his poem, "Julia,"  offered below.  This poem is offered, along with other work by Lesser, in a Poetry Folder, "Moving Between Inner and Outer Worlds," in the most-recent issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.

For more about Julia Sets, visit http://www.karlsims.com/julia.html.

Nature poems -- at Stillwater

     As noted in my 5 August posting, the Stillwater poetry festival (organized by Kevin Clark) was scheduled for last Saturday, September 7 -- and I was (though delayed by the death of a car battery) able to attend.  A time to catch up with old friends -- River Poets Dave Barsky, Carol Ann Heckman, and Janet Locke, and Wilkes-Barre poet Richard Aston.  Poets and musicians featured at the festival included Lester Hirsh, Pamela Kavanaugh, James Pingry, Doug McMinn, Jack Troy, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, and Sheryl St. Germain. 
     The theme at Stillwater was Nature/Agriculture and my 5 August post included poems from conference organizer Clark and featured reader Kasdorf -- poems that involved both nature and mathematics.  Although found in Kasdorf's opening poem, "Double the Digits," mathematics was scarce.  Sheryl St. Germain, the final reader (currently a Pittsburgher, transplanted from New Orleans) briefly mentions computation and measurement in her "Hurricane Season ."   The full poem is available through St Germain's website; here is one of its stanzas. 

Girls and Mathematics

In Indiana, Pennsylvania, my senior high school advanced math teacher was Laura Church--a Barnard College graduate and a flamboyant silver-haired woman who never let any of us suppose that girls could not do mathematics. In college my science scholarship kept me from fleeing mathematics to study literature when I was the only girl in my classes.

April is . . . a time for math and poetry . . .

     Once upon a time
     I counted to the tenth prime
     and found a word to rhyme.

Tomorrow is not only April Fool's Day -- it also begins "National Poetry Month" and "National Mathematics Awareness Month."  I hope you will scroll down through this blog for math-poetry intersections -- and that you will like what you find and return for more.

(If you are near Washington, DC, consider a visit to MathFest on Saturday, April 18.)

Goldbach's conjecture -- easily stated but unsolved

This blog's July 20 posting featured work from poets who have spouses or siblings who are mathematicians.  Today, introducing the work of  Michele Battiste (who considers Goldbach's conjecture), we again honor that theme.  Goldbach's conjecture asserts that every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as a sum of two prime integers.   For example, 4 = 2 + 2, 6 = 3 + 3, 8 = 3 + 5, 10 = 7 + 3 or 5 + 5, and so on.  The conjecture was first proposed in 1742 by German mathematican Christian Goldbach in a letter to Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler -- and in 2010--though it has been verified for many, many, many even integers--it still remains unproved. 

Zero Power

To neutralize the differing effects of any non-zero numbers -- to wipe out vast differences between numbers -- we may raise each of them to the power zero.*  When 0 is applied as the exponent for any nonzero number, the result is 1.  So 7⁰ = 1 and 5378 ⁰ = 1 and (.001)⁰ = 1.   And here are "zero power" and other mathematical concepts interpreted in a poem.

     N to the Zero Power     by Laurie Clemens

     He holds one photograph
     featuring one man and one woman.

     Three birds perch on two wires
     forming an isosceles triangle over the last
     red brick street in town.

Math-Stat Awareness Month -- find a poem!

APRIL is Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month
AND
National Poetry Month!

 Celebrate with a MATHY POEM, found here in this blog!  Scroll down!

If you are looking for mathy poems on a particular topic, the SEARCH box in the right-column may help you find them. For example, here is a link to posts found when I searched using the term "parallel."  And here are posts that include the term "angle."   To find a list of additional useful search terms, scroll down the right-hand column. 

For your browsing pleasure, here are the titles and dates of previous blog postings,

moving backward from the present.  Enjoy!

Mar 31  Math and poetry in film
Mar 28  Split this Rock, Freedom Plow Award, April 21
Mar 27  Math-themed poems at Poets.org
Mar 23  Remember Emmy Noether! 

May 6, 1954

I learned about it via a news broadcast on Pittsburgh radio station KDKA and, for some reason, the event stuck firmly in my memory.  I was 13 years old and on May 6, 1954 Roger Bannister ran a mile in less than 4 minutes. The integer 4 is a perfect square as was Bannister's age then -- 25.  Alternatively, 13 is prime.  As is 60 + 13 = 73.  Yesterday marked 60 years since Bannister broke the record. I have come to love running.  And playing with numbers.

          I . . . never  
          will run out
          of numbers.

2014 (and prior) -- titles, dates of posts

Scroll down to find titles and dates of posts in 2014.  At the bottom are links to lists of posts through 2013 and 2012 and 2011 -- and all the way back to March 2010 when this blog was begun.   This link leads to a PDF file that lists searchable topics and names of poets and mathematicians presented herein. 

Dec 30  Be someone TO COUNT ON in 2015
Dec 28  A Fractal Poem
Dec 25  A thousand Christmas trees
Dec 24  The gift of a poem
Dec 20  The Girl Who Loved Triangles 

Little Boxes

It is hard to know what to say.
Pete Seeger died yesterday at age 94.  
94 = 2 x 47.  47 is prime.
Here is a link to Pete singing "Little Boxes."
Song lyrics are poems.

Celebrate Kim Roberts with "Six"

     Today is the first of a new month and, as expected, this morning I got an email reminder of the monthly Poetry News that is available at Beltway Poetry.    Founded by poet Kim Roberts in 2000, this quarterly journal provides a vital voice for poetry in the Washington, DC area.  Thanks, Kim!
     The poem by Roberts below is one that I first met while walking along the street in Takoma Park, MD  -- a community that actively promotes the arts.  Roberts' poem "Six" was displayed for my sidewalk reading in honor of National Poetry Month -- and my photo of that display is shown following the printed text of her poem. Enjoy!

       Six    by Kim Roberts

       The number of feet to dig for a coffin.
       The highest roll of the dice.
       The symbol of Venus, goddess of love.
       The atomic number of carbon.
       As a prefix, either hex or sex.
       A group of French composers in the 1920s.  

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   

Poems of Calculus

In her thoughtful poem "Calculus" mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz writes of sharing with her students some of their subject's history--a drama enacted by two different sorts of mathematician.  Here are Glaz' opening lines:

Happy Valentine's Day -- I love SEVEN!

Happy Valentine's Day!

                     I love seven –  as  a 

                                                          five-

                                                        letter

     word

    or

  as

            an                    

                                            acute     

                                        angle.

     Not only is seven prime, it is the number

     of my granddaughters who all like math --
     I want to make a mountain to celebrate 
     the girls and the women they become . . .  

Love mathematics!

In the stanzas below, I have some fun with math terminology.  Hope you'll enjoy it too.

       Love!        by JoAnne Growney

       Love algebra!  Through variable numbers
       of factored afternoons and prime evenings,
       party in and out of your circle of associates,
       identify your identity,  meet your inverse.  

Blog history -- title, links for previous posts . . .

      My first posting in this blog was nearly eight years ago (on March 23, 2010).  If, at the time, I had anticipated its duration, I should have made a plan for organizing the posts.  But my ambitions were small.  During the time I was teaching mathematics at Bloomsburg University, I gathered poetry (and various historical materials) for assigned readings to enrich the students' course experiences. After my retirement, I had time to want to share these materials -- others were doing well at making historical material accessible to students but I thought poetry linked to mathematics needed to be shared more.  And so, with my posting of a poem I had written long ago celebrating the mathematical life of Emmy Noether, this blog began.  Particular topics featured often in postings include -- verse that celebrate women, verses that speak out against discrimination, verses that worry about climate change.   

You're invited to:
Scroll through the titles below, browsing to find items of interest
among the more-than-nine-hundred postings since March 2010
OR 
Click on any label -- a list is found in the right-hand column below the author profile 
OR
Enter term(s) in the SEARCH box -- and find all posts containing those terms.

 For example, here is a link to the results of a SEARCH using    math women 

And here is a link to a poem by Brian McCabe that celebrates math-woman Sophie Germain.
This link reaches a poem by Joan Cannon that laments her math-anxiety.
This poem expresses some of my own divided feelings.

                                       2017 Posts