One of my favorite websites to visit is "Poetry and Mathematics" -- a blog from poet Marian Christie. Today I focus on her posting of poems with word-lengths structured by Pascal's Triangle; here is a sample:
Friday, February 23, 2024
Shaping poems with Pascal's Triangle
Monday, February 19, 2024
Mathematician, Poet -- Blind to the worth of Women
As we study mathematics and learn of outstanding mathematicians, many of us do not also learn which of those mathematicians also were poets. A posting that I found recently in Marian Christie's blog, Poetry and Mathematics, features poetry by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-39).
Maxwell's verse also is featured in the math-poetry anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A.K Peters, Ltd., 2008); preview available here at amazon.com.
Below I offer a stanza from a Maxwell poem (posted in this blog back in December, 2015) -- a stanza that shows the long-mistaken attitude that has existed about inferior abilities of math-women:
Monday, November 13, 2023
ADDING -- a List Poem
Via an X (Twitter) posting by poet and blogger Marian Christie (@marian_v_o), I learned about a blog by writer Mike Ferguson entitled Gravy from the Gazebo -- available at this link. Ferguson has posted a series of mathy list poems -- starting on November 10 with "Adding list poem". The poem's opening lines are offered below and the complete poem is found at this link.
The poem is introduced with these words: Love a list poem, this is my latest – the kind of content and ideas I would like to introduce to students for writing their own:
Opening lines of a poem by Mike Ferguson -- the rest is here. |
Ferguson next offered more lists: "Subtracting list poem" at this link AND "Multiplying list poem" at this link AND "Dividing list poem" at this link.
Read. Reread. Share. Write your poetic response. Share!
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Geometry in Poetry
Poet Marian Christie's blog, Poetry and Mathematics -- found at https://marianchristiepoetry.net/ -- is a website I much enjoy visiting; there I learn many many new things. (Here is a link that leads to a list of my previous postings that feature Christie and her work.)
The idea that the shape of a poem may be part of its message is not new -- but Christie has brought more than line-length and syllable-count into the picture and today I focus on her Circular Poems.
A Circular poem by Marian Christie |
Monday, August 21, 2023
Shaping a Poem with Fibonacci numbers
One of my favorite websites to visit is this varied and thoughtful "Poetry and Mathematics" collection of postings by Marian Christie.
Throughout history, people who write poems have often been aided by constraints. When we sit down to write, writing the words that first occur to us -- then shaping the word into extended meanings but following a pattern of rhythm or rhyme or word-count . . . or . . . . For many poets the sonnet, for example, has been a poetic structure that shapes thoughts into special arrangements of words.
In long-ago days, when print and screen versions of poems were not easily available, rhyme schemes were an important aid -- helping one's memory to keep a poem in one's head. Now, aided by widely available print and online visibility, poetry has moved into new forms -- including a variety of visual arrangements.
Monday, June 26, 2023
TRITINA -- a tiny SESTINA
In several previous postings (collected at this link) this blog has considered the poetry form called a sestina: a sestina has 39 lines and its form depends on 6 words -- arrangements of which are the end-words of 6 6-line stanzas; these same words also appear, 2 per line, in the final 3-line stanza.
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Choosing the GEOMETRIC SHAPE of a poem
Structural constraints often govern the patterns we find in poetry -- well-known in poetic history are rhythm-and-rhyme patterns including the sonnet and the villanelle and the limerick, and the syllable-counting pattern of some Haiku. Because many poems were shared orally, rather than in writing, patterns of counting and sound helped to ease the challenges of remembering.
For me a wonderful source for learning about new poetic forms is the blog of poet Marian Christie -- a writer and scholar, born in Zimbawe and now living in England , who has studied and taught both mathematics and poetry. In her very fine blog, Poetry and Mathematics, found here, Christie explores many of the influences that mathematics can have on poetry -- including, here in a recent posting, some effects transmitted by the SHAPE of a poem.
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Poetry found in Scrabblegrams
Poetry is often shaped by constraints -- syllable counts, patterns of rhythm and rhyme, and others -- and a writing constraint that has come to my attention recently is the "Scrabblegram." I learned of the Scrabblegram in a blog posting by Marian Christie -- it is a collection of words that uses each of the 100 Scrabble-tile (including the pair of blank tiles, identified as needed) exactly once.
Christie's blog introduced me to the work of David Cohen who -- using the Twitter handle @dc_scrabblegram -- posts a Scrabblegram daily. Here is a link to Cohen's website. And here is a mathy Scrabblegram verse that he posted on Twitter on World Maths Day, March 8, 2023.
A Scrabblegram from David Cohen. |
Here is a link to another of David Cohen's Scrabblegrams -- this one features PI (and is also offered as a comment to my March 6 posting). And here is one about the Fibonacci sequence.
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Trying a Tritina
Writer and scholar Marian Christie (born in Zimbabwe and now in Kent, England) has had a long term interest in mathematics and poetry and, during the last several years, she has created a blog -- Poetry and Mathematics -- in which she explores, with careful detail, some interesting and important links between these two arts.
Christie's work has been featured several times in this blog and my posting today shows my attempt to learn from one of her postings. At this link, on July 13, 2022, Christie posted "Turning in Circles -- the Tritina" and I have used her posting to learn the requirements for a tritina and, then, to try to write one.
A tritina consists of ten lines -- three three-line stanzas with a final, separate line. The stanzas have the same three end-words, rotated in the sequence 123, 312, 231, and a single final line containing all three end-words.
I have tried to write a tritina and offer my example below -- not because it is good but because it explores a pattern that I think might work well for students trying to write a poem in a math class.
ARE THINGS DIFFERENT NOW IN SCHOOL? a sample tritina
Thursday, July 14, 2022
Poems with multiple choices of what to read . . .
When you pick up something to read -- a newspaper article, instructions for a new appliance, or a poem, or whatever -- in what order do you read it? For many of us, reading is not a beginning-to-end process but a jumping around in which we survey the scope of what's to be read, look for internal highlights, focus on particular terms, etc. A fascinating exploration of multiple ways of reading a particular poem is a treasure I have found in a blog that I visit often, Poetry and Mathematics by Marian Christie.
Born in Zimbabwe and now living in the UK, mathy poet Marian Christie offers a delightful and informative blog that thoughtfully explores various ways in which the arts of mathematics and poetry are linked. In this January, 2022 blog posting Christie examines what she calls a "multiple choice" poem -- that is a poem that offers multiple ways of reading what the page presents. The poem she considers is one written in 1597 by Henry Lok in honor of Elizabeth I; below I offer a diagram of that poem, copied from Christie's blog.
Wednesday, February 2, 2022
New issue -- Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
The online, open-access Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) publishes new issues twice each year -- and the first issue for 2022 is now available and is rich with math-poetry offerings. One of the fun items is a folder of Fibs, featuring contributions (with email contact information) from:
Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Gerd Asta Bones, Robin Chapman,
Marian Christie, Marion Deutsche Cohen, Stephen Day,
Carol Dorf, Susan Gerofsky, Sarah Glaz,
David Greenslade, Emily Grosholz, JoAnne Growney,
Kate Jones, Gizem Karaali, Lisa Lajeunesse,
Cindy Lawrence, Larry Lesser, Alice Major,
Kaz Maslanka, Dan May, Bjoern Muetzel,
Mike Naylor, Doug Norton, Eveline Pye,
Jacob Richardson, S. Brackett Robertson,
Stephanie Strickland, Susana Sulic,
Connie Tettenborn, Racheli Yovel.
And the current JHM issue contains five more poems -- thoughtful and thought-provoking: "What's So Great About Non-Orientable Manifolds?" by Michael McCormick, "Wrong Way" by Joseph Chaney, "The Solipsist’s First Paper" by Sabrina Sixta, "Heuristic or Stochastic?" by E Laura Golberg, and "So Long My Friend" by Bryan McNair.
In closing, I offer here a sample from the folder of Fibs, this one written by Gizem Karaali, one of the editors of JHM.
Where does math come from?
If
You
Want to
Do some math,
Dive into the depths
Of your mind, climb heights of your soul.
Thank you, Gizem Karaali, for your work in humanizing mathematics!
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Aelindromes -- and Pi
On Twitter, I have seen frequent posts by UK-based writer Anthony Etherin -- and, encouraged by mathy poet Marian Christie, I have found it interesting to explore his work. Etherin focuses on constrained, formal, visual, and experimental poetry -- he tweets @Anthony_Etherin; he manages Penteract Press. AND Etherin has invented a new type of writing-constraint called the aelindrome -- a bit like the palindrome ( such as top spot or never odd or even ) except that the reversals involve more than one letter. Here is a simple example of an aelindrome:
melody, a bloody elm which can be divided into m el ody ablo ody el m
Moonless Moonlight by Anthony Etherin
Low, fatal nights! Late, moonless.... Tense, we glitch.
We swim bled sky, along the ashy glow.
Shy glow along the ambled sky, we switch.
We glisten -- see slate moonlight's natal flow.
Go here to learn more of Anthony Etherin and his work.
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
Enjoy the Possibilities in a Multiple-Choice Poem
Just as a test-taker mulls over which answer is correct, a poet
mulls over word choices and what should come next. South Dakota mathematician-poet Daniel May (professor at Black Hills State
University) has broadly captured these decision choices in a poetry-form
called a Digraph Poem or a Multiple Choice Poem. I first learned of this idea several
years ago at a Bridges Math-Art
Conference at Waterloo, Canada when May and a colleague, Courtney
Huse Wika, presented a paper entitled "The Poetics of a Cyclic
Directed Graph" (available online here in the Bridges Archives). In this paper is a poetry-creation by Huse Wika that involves various choices and orders of stanzas.
This mixing of stanzas came to my attention again via a paper by May entitled "In the beginning all is null" which appeared in Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, Volume 14, Issue 1-2 (2020) as one of a group of "artist's statements." In this latter paper, May thoughtfully describes his process of composing his poem -- he composed eight eight-line stanzas -- and the reader was to read a stanza, choose and read another stanza, and so on with a third. In all, eight poems -- each sharing stanzas with others.
Recently a new online multidisciplinary journal, Poetrishy, has been born -- and it's first issue features another Multiple-Choice/Digraph poem by Dan May entitled "What the Body Does Next" --and available here. Although you will need to follow the link I've offered to actually read the poem, I offer below a small screen-shot -- so that you can get a sense of its structure.
Issue 1 of Poetrishy also contains work by these mathy poets -- Larry Lesser, Marian Christie, and Marion Deutsche Cohen. And several more authors whose work is fun to explore.
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
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.
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Mathematical Forms in Poetry . . .
During recent days, one of my special enjoyments has been finding time to read Marian Christie's blog -- a delightful collection of poetry and poetic musings with frequent connections to mathematics. Christie's biographical sketch (available here) indicates that she, like me, grew up enjoying both poetry and math. She became a math teacher and, after her years of teaching ended, she turned her attention to poetry. Below I present a sample of her mathy poetry, followed by links to several of her postings.
Today, in a season that is approaching summer, I coolly offer Christie's "Midwinter" poem (found here in her blog) -- a stanza in which the poet uses Pascal's triangle to pattern her words:
a Pascal-triangle poem -- find it and lots of other mathy poems here. |
Here, next, are links to several of Christie's math-poetry blog postings. ENJOY!
Monday, April 5, 2021
Mathy Poets plan for 2021 BRIDGES Conference
The Annual BRIDGES Math-Art
Conference will be virtual again this year (August 2-6, 2021) and
mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz has developed an online array of poets and
poetry to be part of this program. Bios and sample poems are already available here.
Participating poets include: Marian Christie, Carol Dorf, Susan Gerofsky. David Greenslade, Emily Grosholz, JoAnne Growney, Lisa Lajeunesse, Marco Lucchesi, Mike Naylor, Osmo Pekonen, Tom Petsinis, Eveline Pye, Any Uyematsu, Ursula Whitcher -- and, also, these open-mike participants: Susana Sulic, S. Brackert Robertson, Stephen Wren, Marion Deutsche Cohen, Connie Tetteborn, Jacob Richardson, Robin Chapman. Stephanie Strickland. (Bios and sample poems here.)
Here is a sample from the BRIDGES poetry program:
Descartes by Eeva-Liisa Manner
translated from the Finnish by Osmo Pekonen
I thought, but I wasn't.
I said animals were machines.
I had lost everything but my reason.
Monday, February 8, 2021
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics -- new issue
Recently released, Issue 1 of Volume 11 (2021) of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics; in it Editors Mark Huber and Gizem Karaali have collected for us a wonderful selection of articles -- including a work of fiction, a folder of teaching limericks, and the following very fine (and mathy) poems:
"Early Morning Mathematics Classes" by Angelina Schenck
"Proof Theory" by Stan Raatz
"One Straight Line Addresses Another Traveling in the Same Direction
on an Infinite Plane" by Daniel W. Galef
"Turing's Machine" by Mike Curtis
"Iterations of Emptying" by Marian Christie
Go here to JHM Volume 11 to explore, to enjoy!
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Varieties of SQUARE poems
When writing a poem on a topic about which I feel strongly, I often like to use constraints -- such as patterns of syllable-counts or rhymes -- to help me to process my ideas carefully. A recent post by mathematician-poet Marian Christie does a delightful job of showing how the square can be used to shape very fine poems. Here is a link to Christie's post, "Mathematical forms in poetry: Square poems" -- a posting which includes examples of acrostic poems and grid poems, palindromes, Latin squares and visual poetry.
Below I offer one of Christie's own poems, "Earth Geometry" -- a poem that involves the square and the cube in its structure and thereby relates to ancient theories of matter and to a more current belief that the cube is a basic structure of the earth. (View Christie's full explanation here.)
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Another Fibonacci poem . . .
Modern poetry has many "free verse" poems that follow no particular form AND ALSO a variety of new forms. One particularly popular format (appearing often in this blog) is to count syllables-per-line using the Fibonacci numbers Here an interesting example by poet Marian Christie which describes increasing complexities of crocheting using Fibonacci syllable-counts.
"Crochet" -- a FIB by Marian Christie |