Those trains in word problems -- who rides them?

    A Problem in a Math Book     by Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)

     I remember a problem in a math book
     about a train that leaves from place A and another train
     that leaves from place B. When will they meet?
     And no one ever asked what happens when they meet:
     will they stop or pass each other by, or maybe collide?
     And none of the problems was about a man who leaves from place A
     and a woman who leaves from place B. When will they meet, 

"Binary Heart" -- linking love and mathematics

      From the xkcd webcomic by Randall Munroe -- and also shown on the cover of Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics, we have this reminder of upcoming Valentine's Day.

"Binary Heart" by Randall Munroe,
at https://xkcd.com/99/

     Munroe's clever drawings "of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" have appeared also in previous postings in this blog (here's a link) and his website is fun to visit.
     The anthology, Strange Attractors; Poems of Love and Mathematics-- edited by Sarah Glaz and me -- was published in 2008 by AK Peters and contains more than 150 poems of math and love (including another -- "Useless" -- by Munroe.)  More about Munroe is available here.

Dogs Know . . . Mathematics

     A mathematics/statistics education researcher who writes both poetry and song lyrics -- who writes these often and well -- is Lawrence "Larry" Lesser, professor at The University of Texas at El Paso.  A search of prior postings in this blog leads to a variety of Lesser's poems: here's a link.
   And here is another Lesser poem to enjoy  -- this one found along with lots more math-poetry in the Bridges 2016 Poetry Anthology, edited by Sarah Glaz (Tessellations Publishing, 2016).

   
       Dogs Know     by Larry Lesser

       A dog-eared College Mathematics Journal lies
       open to a paper called
       "Do dogs know calculus?"
       where the author's canine travels land
       and water to reach most quickly
       the ball thrown
       into Lake Michigan.  

The Cube of the Rainbow

     Later this week a scheduled screening (in nearby Takoma Park, MD) of a film about Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) has prompted me to return to some rereading of Dickinson's verse -- which is occasionally mathematical.   For example:

       We shall find the Cube of the Rainbow     by Emily Dickinson

       We shall find the Cube of the Rainbow.
       Of that there is no doubt.
       But the Arc of a Lover's conjecture
       Eludes the finding out.

The stanza above is found in many places; my source is Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics, ed. by S Glaz and JA Growney (AK Peters/CRC Press, 2008).  This link leads to previous postings of Dickinson's work in this blog.

"My number is . . ."

    More than twenty years ago I found and admired Montana poet Sandra Alcosser's poem, "My Number" (included in Except by Nature, Graywolf, 1998) -- and I included it in a small anthology, Numbers and Faces, that I edited; (published in 2001 by the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics).  "My Number" also has more recently also been included in Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics  (Edited by Glaz and Growney: AK Peters/CRC Press, 2008).

My Number     by Sandra Alcosser

I’m linked with the fate of the world’s disasters 

and only have a little freedom to live or die.

VITESLAV NEZVAL

My number is small.  An hundred pounds of water,

A quart of salt.  Her digit is a garment.

I wear her like a shadow.  We judge each other,
My number and I.  She is the title.  The license.

The cash drawer.  My random number.
She protects me from myself.  She desires me.

She says she’s only one of thirty million species.
She wishes she were more than anecdotal evidence.

Is TWO more than ONE?

     A poetry friend reminded me recently via email of the poetry of Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) -- both humorous and provocative.  The emailed poem was "Zebra Question" and it employs the strategy so often considered in mathematics -- in testing the truth of a statement, consider also the opposite.   Silverstein's "Zebra Question" opens with these lines:

       I asked the Zebra,
       Are you black with white stripes?
       Or white with black stripes?
       And the zebra asked me,
       Are you good with bad habits?
       Or are you bad with good habits?     

An Interview of/by a Mathy Poet

     University of Connecticut mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz has interviewed me on behalf of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts.  The article Sarah wrote is now available online -- but the online version requires a costly subscription.  I offer instead this link to a pdf file of her "Artist Interview: JoAnne Growney."  The article gives some of my personal and mathematical history -- growing up on a farm, studying mathematics because of a scholarship, loving both poetry and math and eventually finding time to follow both interests and see their connections.  And it includes some poems. I invite you to follow this link and browse a bit!  

Thank you, Sarah!

Musical sounds of math words -- in a CENTO

  A cento is a literary work formed by assembling 

words or phrases from other writers.  

As a math-person, I love to hear the melodic rhythm of certain multi-syllabic mathematical terms.  And so I have looked at a list of dissertation-titles of twentieth century female mathematicians -- and I have chosen words from these titles that sounded lovely to me.  Here is my cento poem; read it ALOUD and enjoy the sounds.

"Celebrating Dissertations"     

 The math-women whose titles have been sampled here are:

Mathematics and Valentine's Day

     On February 12, 2011, this blog first offered poetry to celebrate Valentine's Day -- and there presented Hannah Stein's poem, "Loving a Mathematician."  Please follow this link and enjoy!
     A perfect way for math-fans to celebrate Valentine's Day is with some "poems of love and mathematics."   Many such poems have been collected in the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters/CRC Pres, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me.  One of the classics included therein is as a long-loved sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)  -- here are its opening lines:       

     How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.
     I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
     My soul can reach . . .

Make time to celebrate love and mathematics!   To find more verses SEARCH this blog using the term Valentine and scroll down through the variety of posts.

A Multi-Author Poem Celebrating Math-People

     At the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore last Friday evening, the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) and SIGMAA-ARTS sponsored a poetry reading.  

Moderated  by Gizem Karaali, the pre-reregistered participants included

 Lawrence M. Lesser, Sarah Glaz, Ben Orlin, Rachel Levy, Luise Kappe,

Brooke C. Johnston, Douglas Norton, Claudia Gary, JoAnne Growney

In addition to poems by participants registered in advance, the event included a "crowd-sourced" poem.  Each person attending was invited to submit two lines of poetry about math-people -- and the pairs of lines were put together into a poem that I offer below.  MANY THANKS to these participants who gave us lines.

Order of contributors (2 lines each): David Reimann, Maru Colbert, Greg Coxson,

 David Flesner, Nancy Johnston, Kate Jones, Hunter Johnston, Debra Bordeau (4 lines), 

Luise Kappe (in German—with translation at end), Margaret Kepner, Thomas Atkinson,  

Brooke Johnston, Andrew Johnston, Ximena Catpillan, Bronna Butler, Courtney Hauf,

 JoAnne Growney, Doug Norton, Sean Owen, Eric Marland

Sending THANK-YOU to all of the authors, 

               I present below our poem, "We Love Mathematics."

We Love Mathematics

Mathematicians are meeting today—
ideas unfold in space, time, and hearts. 
   Math is the language of everyone
   Any part of everything began as a sum.   

A poem . . . like a mathematical proof . . .

     Mathematician-Poet Sarah Glaz has been active in bringing poetry events to the annual summer Math-Arts conference Bridges -- and she has given me permission to include this poem which appears in the Bridges 2018 Poetry Anthology and in her wonderful recent collection Ode to Numbers  (Antrim House, 2017). 

      Like a Mathematical Proof     by Sarah Glaz

       A poem courses through me
       like a mathematical proof,
       arriving whole from nowhere,
       from a distant galaxy of thought.  

Celebrating winter with a Fibonacci poem

  Another year ends . . . may 2019 bring good numbers for us all!  

     Exercise -- especially jogging -- helps to channel my restless energy and allow me to be productive.  Here is a poem of jogging and the Fibonacci numbers.

Counting on a December morning     by JoAnne Growney

one chickadee, one squirrel
my own two feet left-right left-right on the soft track
around the soccer field three blocks from my home
sparkling bright against grey sky five crows alight
in the lacy spread of fractal branches of eight bare locust trees

when I am early morning’s first human to arrive at Shepherd Park
when I am first and the wind is gentle and the temperature
is not bitter cold
dozens of robins hop and flutter near me
as I plod some thirteen laps

smiling, maybe losing count
and loving my Fibonacci world

Thanks to mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz who has included this poem 

in the Bridges Stockholm 2018 Poetry Anthology.

The Heart's Arithmetic

     For me, the Christmas holiday season is a time for family gathering and a treasured time for that reason.  Today my thoughts turn to one of my favorite poems of family and mathematics -- a poem by much-too-soon-departed poet Wilmer Mills (1969-2011),  a poem first published in Poetry and also also found here at the Poetry Foundation website. 

     An Equation for My Children  by Wilmer Mills

     It may be esoteric and perverse
     That I consult Pythagoras to hear
     A music tuning in the universe.
     My interest in his math of star and sphere
     Has triggered theorems too far-fetched to solve.  

Chaos theory -- portrayed in poetry

     A poem I have long loved is "Chaos Theory" by poet (and fiction writer and scholar) Ronald Wallace -- and he has given me permission to offer it below.

Chaos Theory     by Ronald Wallace

    1. Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

       For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
       for want of a shoe the horse was lost,
       and so on to the ultimate loss—a battle,
       a world. In other words, the breeze
       from this butterfly's golden wings
       could fan a tsunami in Indonesia
       or send a small chill across the neck 
       of an old love about to collapse in Kansas
       in an alcoholic stupor—her last.
       Everything is connected. Blame it on
       the butterfly, if you will. Or the gesture
       thirty years ago, the glance across
       the ninth-grade auditorium floor,   

Something or Nothing -- Thinking about Zero

     The site of the 2019 Bridges Math-Arts conference has been announced  -- it will meet in Linz, Austria next July.  This link leads to the archives of the 2018 and earlier conferences.  Each recent year a poetry reading (coordinated by Sarah Glaz) has been part of the Bridges activities -- and this year a poetry anthology also was compiled.  Here is a poem by Canadian poet Alice Major that was featured both in this year's reading and in the anthology  -- a poem that also appears, along with other math and science poems, in Major's latest collection, Welcome to the Anthropocene. (University of Alberta Press, 2018).  Major's poem examines death and, as it does so, explores various meanings of zero.

Zero divided by zero     by Alice Major

There is no right answer.

The trains of logic crash, annihilate

certainty. Zero is just as good an answer

as one. Nothingness or loneliness.

There is no right answer.    

Math Is Beautiful and So Are You

 Read on for a poem of love and mathematics! 

    This poem celebrates an upcoming wedding . . .  one of my two wonderful sons will be getting married next Saturday to a lovely and special woman -- and this delightful occasion also will bring a host of scattered family members together.  I am thrilled by all of this and offer, for readers also to celebrate, a lovely poem:

Math Is Beautiful and So Are You     by Becky Dennison Sakellariou

     If n is an even number
     then I'll kiss you goodnight right here, 
     but if the modulus k is the unique solution,
     I'll take you in my arms for the long night.  

Celebrating Visual Poetry

     One of my delights in both poetry and mathematics is the multiplicity of meanings that come from careful attention to a particular text.  Today I have been revisiting the work of visual-poets Robert "Bob" Grumman (1941-2015) and  Karl Kempton and loving the surprises as I rediscover them.  Visual-mathematical poet Kazmier Maslanka in his blog, "Mathematical Poetry,"  generously features the work of many other poets beside his own -- and here (from this link) is one of Kempton's poems:

by Karl Kempton

Speaking, understanding . . . where is truth?

     A review in the Washington Post of a new book about Oscar Wilde opens with this quote:

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person."

and Wilde's words have gotten me thinking again about subtleties of language.
     Also in recent news, the death of Nobelist V. S. Naipaul (1932-2018) -- and here is one of  this writer's thought-provoking statements:

            Non-fiction can distort;
            facts can be realigned.
            But fiction never lies.            V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River

My own thoughts about language most often focus on the condensed languages of mathematics and poetry -- and the need for frequent re-readings before understanding arrives.  Here, below, I include a poem by Stephanie Strickland that speaks eloquently of the struggles in which our minds engage concerning objects and the symbols that represent them -- struggles that are involved in creating and reading both mathematics and poetry . . .

     Striving All My Life     by Stephanie Strickland

     Maxwell said: There is no more powerful way
     to introduce knowledge to the mind than … as many different
     ways as we can, wrenching the mind   

Poetry at BRIDGES 2018

The 2018 Brides Math-Arts Conference in Stockholm will take place this week -- July 25-29, 2018.  Mathematician Sarah Glaz has been a leader in stimulating the poetry portion of this conference -- including organization of a reading to be held on Saturday, July 28 and a Poetry Anthology, of which a portion of the cover is shown below.

Poetry Anthology
edited by Sarah Glaz, Tessellations Publishing

Here, from the anthology, is a sample of its finery -- a poem by mathematician, poet, and editor, Sarah Glaz:  

BRIDGES, 2018 -- math-art-poetry -- in Stockholm

       During each summer since 1998, mathematicians and visual artists, poets and musicians, have gotten together at a BRIDGES conference to celebrate the overlapping connections of their arts.  This years conference, BRIDGES 2018, will be held July 25-59 in Stockholm.  As she has done in several previous years, mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz has organized a poetry reading as part of that event; this link leads to information about the participating poets.  Available for purchase, a poetry anthology with work from past and present Bridges poets.  The small poem offered below is one that is featured in the anthology.

          Good Fortune       by JoAnne Growney

          is good numbers—
          the length of a furrow,
          the count of years,
          the depth of a broken heart,
          the cost of camouflage, 
          the volume of tears.

     "Good Fortune" also is found in my collection, Red Has No Reason (Plain View Press, 2010).