![]() |
From Solo: A Journal of Poetry, 1996. |
Friday, February 2, 2024
Distance and Time
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Ending the Year with Gratitude -- for Teachers!
During his time as Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins created Poetry 180 -- a project designed to encourage students to engage with poetry but providing a poem (accessible for high school students) for each of the 180 days of the school year. Each week in my email, I get a message with links to five of these poems; one of the recent ones (poem 72, given below) has reminded me about the importance of teachers in my life -- teachers of poetry AND teachers of mathematics -- in shaping my learning and my personhood. Here is "Gratitude to Old Teachers" by Robert Bly:
Poem 072: Gratitude to Old Teachers by Robert Bly
When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?
Water that once could take no human weight—
We were students then—holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.
Bly's poem is from his collection, Eating the Honey of Words, (HarperCollins, NY, 1999). Its presentation in Poetry 180 may be found at this link.
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Learning from Poetry -- "The Courtesy of the Blind"
Can difficulty with understanding mathematics be compared with physical blindness -- a difficulty that is biological rather than chosen? This is a question that has come to my mind as a reaction to Wislawa Szymborska's poem (offered below) "The Courtesy of the Blind." This Szymborska poem is part of a wonderful online collections of poetry, Poetry 180, a poem for each day of the 180-day public school year.
Poem 119: The Courtesy of the Blind by Wislawa Szymborska
Polish poet Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012)
was the 1996 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature
and the author of over 20 volumes of poetry.
The poet reads his lines to the blind.
He hadn’t guessed that it would be so hard.
His voice trembles.
His hands shake.
He senses that every sentence
is put to the test of darkness.
He must muddle through alone,
without colors or lights.
Friday, June 16, 2017
Fondness for numbers . . .
A poem that offers affection for mathematics is "Numbers," by Mary Cornish, found as Poem 8 at Poetry 180 (a one-a-day collection of poems for secondary students) as well as at The Poetry Foundation. Cornish's poem begins with this stanza:
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
The mathematician, she . . . .
In this posting I celebrate Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (1906-1992) -- a mathematician with a doctorate from Yale, a navy admiral, a computer scientist who led in the development of COBOL, an early (c.1959) programming language. A person I had the good fortune to meet when she visited Bloomsburg University in 1984 to receive an honorary Doctor of Science Degree. Hopper was imaginative and articulate; here is some poetry found in her words.
If it's a
good idea,
do it.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Attitudes of Numbers
Snider's poem brings to mind a view of mathematics that repeatedly bothers me: I wonder why some people -- who would not complain about the fixendess of spellings of "cat" or "dog" or "sum" -- dislike mathematics for the so-called rigidity of arithmetic facts such as "2 + 4 = 6." ? ? ?