As she had done in numerous preceding years, mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz is once again an organizer for a poetry reading at the BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference -- this year to be held in Richmond, Virginia, August 1-5.
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| Bridges Poetry Reading Website |
Poetry Reading Sunday, August 4, 3:00 - 5:00 pm2500 West Broad Street Richmond, Virginia
Lawrence "Larry" Lesser is a mathematics and statistics professor at the University of Texas in El Paso -- and is also an active poet and song-writer. This link leads to my previous inclusions of his poetry and ideas earlier in this blog. Recently one of Lesser's Facebook postings led me to an article about a student at Kalamazoo College in Michigan who combined math with poetry for her senior project. This article about Elizabeth "Lizzy" Rottenberk tell how her loves for mathematics and poetry connect and it offers the following sample math-poetry pair:
Earlier this month, mathematician, songwriter, and poet Larry Lesser posted a link on Facebook to an article (found here at "The Conversation") about ways that Penn State University Professor Ricardo Martinez combines mathematics and poetry in a course entitled "The Ways Math and Poetry Can Open Your Eyes to the World." When asked, "What prompted the idea for the course?", Martinex responded:
I have always enjoyed writing poetry. As a high school mathematics teacher, I recall telling my students that everything is and can be connected to math, even creative writing. Then, as a graduate student, I read about people using “I am” poem templates for young people to express who they are through a series of “I am” statements, and I thought to myself, where is the “I am” math poem template? So I created one.
Here is a portion of a template that Martinez has created to use with students:
One of the fun surprises I have had recently is to discover mathematics in the lyrics of a once-popular song -- in "Ray's Dad's Cadillac" by musical legend Joni Mitchell, recent recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
Joni Mitchell -- who has recently come back to the stage after serious illness -- has surmounted barriers to female achievement and recognition as have many math-women. She has indeed "looked at life from both sides now" . . . Below I offer two mathy stanzas from her song -- "Ray's Dad's Cadillac." (The complete lyrics are available at this link).
from Ray's Dad's Cadillac by Joni Mitchell
Carol Dorf has been a long-time leader in math poetry projects. A now-retired secondary school math teacher from California, Carol is the poetry editor of the online journal Talking Writing -- an online journal that has included a variety of mathy poems. Recently, at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, Carol gave a presentation entitled "Poetry of Mathematical Definitions" -- the abstract for this talk begins with this provocative sentence:
Mathematical poetry begins when worlds we consider distinct collide.
Carol's poetry-editorship for Talking Writing has led to many math-related poems being published therein. Here is a link to those poems and a bit of other math-related content; the following list includes names of writers whose work has been included there: Robin Chapman, Marion Deutsche Cohen, Allison Hedge Coke, Mary Cresswell, Catherine Daly, Carol Dorf, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Sarah Glaz, JoAnne Growney, Athena Kildegaard, Larry Lesser, Elizabeth Langosy , Marco Maisto, Alice Major, Katie Manning, Daniel May, David Morimoto, Giavanna Munafo, Karen Ohlson, Eveline Pye, Stephanie Strickland, Amy Uyematsu, Sue Brannan Walker, and Jean Wolff. Some of the poets have been featured more than once and to find all work by a particular author, SEARCH is recommended.
And here, from Talking Writing, is one of Carol Dorf's fascinating poems:
Lost Information by Carol Dorf
Visualize groups: there’s the babysitting co-op,
with slips of scrip the children color during
quarterly potlucks; and more than enough churches
each with study evenings, and fundraising committees;
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!
Some of the most memorable links between mathematics and the arts are found in song-lyrics. For example, "That's Mathematics" by retired American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician Tom Lehrer (now aged 93): Here is the opening stanza (the complete lyrics are found at this link):
Counting sheep
When you're trying to sleep
Being fair
When there's something to share
Being neat
When you're folding a sheet
That's mathematics! More mathy lyrics (by Lehrer and others) are found here.
A current math educator offers us lots more lyrics to learn from and enjoy; from Larry Lesser -- a professor at the University of Texas in El Paso -- is a long-time creator of math-music works. Here's a link to a list.
This blog also has previously published lots of Lesser's fine work; here's a link.
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.
Every six months the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics offers a new online issue and includes a generous offering of mathy poems. Here is a link to the current issue (Vol, 11, No, 2, July 2021) and I offer --after a sample, which features a type of algebra problem -- the titles, authors, and links to JHM mathy poems.
Train Algebra by Mary Soon Lee
Do not use a calculator. Show your work.
Haruki leaves Chicago Union Station at 10:42 pm
on a train traveling at 60 miles per hour.
At 10:33 pm, Haruki boards the train.
He’s abandoned his job,
his collection of cactuses;
has only his cell phone, his wallet,
and a dog-eared paperback.
He walks through two carriages
before finding an open seat,
apologizes as he sits down
beside a woman his mother’s age.
The woman glares at him.
Lawrence "Larry" Lesser is a professor in the Mathematical Sciences Department at the University of Texas in El Paso and a widely published creator of mathy poems. Here are the opening stanzas of a poem that appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of Teaching for Excellence and Equity in Mathematics (TEEM), a journal of the NCTM affiliate organization TODOS: Mathematics for ALL.
from ₵AN
₵EL by Lawrence Mark Lesser
Cancel is from Latin for ‘make like a lattice’,
like crisscrossed wood fencing
in our backyard where we safely
dine with friends,
or like COVID-caused crossouts
on calendars--
a cancelled appointment (dis-appointment)
or music event (dis-concerting).
Teachers don’t like saying ‘cancel’
lest students get carried away,
cancelling sixes of 26/65,
which does equal two-fifths
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| These diagrams are part of a paper by L.M. Lesser found here. |
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| For more about Julia Sets, visit http://www.karlsims.com/julia.html. |
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