Micro Poetry

What is Micro Poetry?

Micropoetry (a term sometimes offered as two terms) is an ultra-short form of poetry, typically under 25 words or 140 characters, blending creative brevity with precise language characterized by sharp imagery and emotional depth while allowing diverse interpretations.  (Definition found at this website.)

Both mathematics and poetry are condensed languages, endeavoring to say much in a few words or symbols and so, when I recently came across the term "Micropoetry' -- aka micro-poetry or micropoetry -- I became curious (and I thought of Haiku) and I decided to to explore. 

Honoring Peter Cameron

THANK YOU, Peter Cameron,

for your generous sharing of mathematical ideas and their links!

      Happening soon -- the Conference on Theoretical and Computational Algebra -- scheduled to take place in Evora, Portugal, June 29 - July 3, 2025.  (Conference information is available at this link.)   A special feature of this conference will be the honoring of mathematician Peter Cameron.  As mathematicians and poetry-lovers and bloggers, Peter and I discovered each other online.  This  link leads to Cameron's first "Mathematics and poetry" blog posting (on April 6, 2010) and in Cameron's posting on July 14, 2010 (entitled "Mathematics and Poetry, 2") he links to my blog (first posting March 23, 2010) with this statement:

JoAnne Growney has posted on her blog a poem structured using prime factorisations: I think it is a lovely poem, and urge you to take a look.

This link leads to a summary-description of Cameron's blog and this link goes to his first "Mathematics and poetry" posting.   AND, here is a link to the search-results for the term "poetry" in his blog.

     I would like to celebrate Peter Cameron by sharing the opening stanzas of his ten-stanza mathy poem, "Millennium":  

An AMS Presentation by Sarah Hart

      One of the strong and consistent promoters of connections between mathematics and the arts is Sarah Hart and she recently gave the 2025 Einstein Public Lecture at Clemson University (sponsored by AMS, the American Mathematical Society) entitled "A Mathematical Journey Through Literature."  

     Hart is the author of Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature (Flatiron Books, 2023) -- NYTimes review here;  purchase info here.  Her presentation, summarized here in an AMS article entitled "The Axiom of a Sonnet," explored ways that the guidelines for a sonnet -- or other poetic structure -- are similar to the guidelines for a mathematical structure such as a group or a ring.  A thought-provoking quote from her presentation:

Math can lead us to Poetry . . .

      As I age and find myself slowing down in my math-poetry ventures it is a delight to see other mathy writers surging with energy and thoughtful publications.

     One frequent source of math-arts connections is Sarah Hart, Professor Emerita of Mathematics, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Birbeck University, London.  Here is a link to an article by Hart containing material excerpted from her collection Once Upon a Prime:  The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature (Flatiron Books:  New York, 2023).  

     Once Upon a Prime is a prose explanation completed with frequent literary examples.  Here is a poem that her daughter, Emma, wrote "for Mummy's book." 

Enjoying Math-Poetry Connections

           Poet Emily Lutken's first career was as a physician -- she specialized in family medicine and spent many years of practice in the Navaho Nation.  Following this she taught middle and high school math and science for several years , , , and now, retired, she has time for music, poetry, and other arts.

     On my shelf --- for my frequent rereading and enjoyment -- is a copy of Lutken's 2021 collection, Manifold:  poetry of mathematics. (3: A Taos Press, 2021).   Here is a favorite poem of mine from that collection:

   Prime Syllable Song    by Emily Lutken

          Prime 
          numbers
          do not care
          to make a rhyme.
          They blaze wild pathways.
          While others tow the line,
          they play crwths or smash guitars,
          unlike composite counts assigned
          to echo harmonic notes in time
          and avoid the oddball and ill-defined.
          Without primes, though, the music would be boring,
          the sing-song regularity, the constant whine
          would drive all of us absolutely batshit bonkers.

This link leads to more information about Manifold, in which the poem above is found.  This link leads to Lutken's website -- which includes more poetry and a bio of the poet.

This link leads to a poem by Lutken about a solar eclipse.  

Another of Lutken's poems, "Ars Parabola," appears in this blog at this link.

A blog posting written by ChatGPT 3.5

     For a long time I have been curious about what would result if I asked AI to write a blog post for me.  One day recently I signed in at https://chat.openai.com/ and was asked by ChatGPT 3.5,  "How can I help you today?"  Copied and pasted below is our conversation (copied from this link).  (I am disappointed that ChatGPT's respones did not, as my postings usually do, include a poem.)  Read -- and reflect!

I have a blog entitled "Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics" and I would like Chat GPT to write a blog posting for me.  

From ChatGPT: 

Title: Exploring the Symmetry of Numbers: A Mathematical Poetic Journey

Welcome back to "  Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics"! Today, let's delve into the captivating world where numbers and poetry intertwine, creating harmonies of symmetry and rhythm. Join me on this whimsical voyage where mathematical concepts dance with lyrical verses, inviting you to see the beauty in both.

Once upon a Prime . . .

      British Mathematician Sarah B. Hart is receiving wide-spread publicity and praise in recent days for the publication of her book Once Upon a Prime:  The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature (Flatiron Books:  New York, 2023).  (Here is a link to an enthusiastic review in The New York Times by Jordan Ellenberg.)   

     My copy of Hart's book arrived last week and I have been enjoying not only the information but the point of view.  Hart's opening chapter is "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe:  The Patterns of Poetry" and, for those of you who don't have the book yet, an excerpt from opening pages of the chapter is included here in an article in Literary Hub.

Writing a Proof in Verse -- with ChatGPT3

     Academician Punya Mishra (from Arizona State) is active in integrating various topics and learning patterns.  Back in 2020, at this link I featured his poem, "The Mathematical i"  -- and Mishra has recently shared with me some of his explorations with poetry created by artificial intelligence.

     Back in 2010, Mishra wrote a fascinating poem (The Infinity of Primes")  -- a poem that is also a proof -- which begins with these stanzas:

     Over numbers and their combinations if you sit and mull
     You will find that not one of them is uninteresting and dull.
     But it is a certain class of figures that most attention stirs
     Yes, I am speaking of those special ones, the prime numbers.

     Prime numbers are interesting, the mathematician posits,
     ‘Cos they make up all the others, the so-called composites.
     Here’s an imperfect analogy, a simple little working rule,
     Consider the prime to be an atom, then a composite’s a molecule. 

                        . . .               Mishra's complete 17-stanza poem is available here.

Mishra recently explored the the ability of ChatGPT3 to create a proof of the infinity of the set of primes;  The stanzas below offer a start of a proof-attempt; its completion and two other attempts are available at this link.

War and Resistance -- in Eleven Three-line Stanzas

      Recently I searched work by Ukranian authors at the Poetry International website -- hoping to find poems with mentions of mathematics -- but I did not.  Eventually, though, praise of a poem by UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage led me to "Resistance" (published here in The Guardian) with uses a prime number (11) of stanzas, each with a prime number (3) of lines, to speak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects.  Here are the opening stanzas:

       Resistance       by Simon Armitage

          It’s war again: a family
             carries its family out of a pranged house
                under a burning thatch.

          The next scene smacks
             of archive newsreel: platforms and trains
                (never again, never again),

          toddlers passed
             over heads and shoulders, lifetimes stowed
                in luggage racks.

          It’s war again: unmistakable smoke
             on the near horizon mistaken
                for thick fog. Fingers crossed.          . . .     

     for the rest of Resistance, follow this link.

     Ukrainian-born Ilya Kaminsky is a very fine poet now living in the US.  Here is a link to one of his poems that describes too many of us, "We Lived Happily During the War."

Write to learn ... follow constraints ... find poems

     Some people (myself included) take lots of notes during a lecture or other program -- for it seems that the physical activity of placing the words on the page is part of the process of installing the ideas in memory.  For me, also, the creation of a paragraph or a poem depends on the teamwork of hands and brain.

     One of the ways that poets engage themselves in creating new thoughts is by accepting the guidance of formal constraints -- creating the fourteen lines of a sonnet or the nineteen lines of a villanelle with strict patterns of rhythm and rhyme and repetition.  Below I consider the question of what I want for my birthday  --  and use that in my struggle to write a sonnet:

You asked me
      for a birthday gift suggestion . . .  by JoAnne Growney    

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  

Earth Day -- are we the FINAL ones?

Tomorrow (April 22) is Earth Day.  This worried poem is structured using
The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.
(Some explanatory notes follow the poem.)

"We Are the Final Ones"  by JoAnne Growney

Probe the gaps between prime numbers . . .

     Each issue of The New Yorker offers poetry, but seldom do the poems link to mathematics.  However, the issue for March 8, 2021 offers us "Number Theory" by poet and translator Rosanna Warren.  Here are a few of its lines:

        . . .   like you, inquisitive.  You sit
       taut in  your chair, whispering, as you probe
       the gaps between prime numbers.  Until infinity.

       It's pattern you seek.  The opening through which
       your thought will glide suddenly into a lit space
       and be at home.   . . .

Here is a link to Warren's complete poem.

Mathy Rhymes

     Yesterday's note on "A Mathematical Morsel Every Day" -- an American Mathematical Society page-a-day calendar for 2020 assembled by mathematician and writer Evelyn Lamb -- is a fact that involves the first six digits in the decimal expansion of  π :    314159 is a prime number.

And, because this is a math-poetry blog, I have turned this information into a syllable-square rhyme:

           3     1     4

           1     5     9

           is a prime!

Perhaps you'd like to explore more:    Here's a link to previous blog postings with ideas by Evelyn Lamb.    Rhymes often help us to remember; here is a link to postings of rhymes used to remember the digits of π.    AND here is a link to some postings that feature square stanzas.

A rhyme about a prime

     Tomorrow, May 16, is the birthday of Pafnuty Chebyshev (1821-1894), who was one of the founders of Russian mathematics and the first to prove (in 1850) a conjecture (about positive integers) made in 1845 by French mathematician Joseph Bertrand (1822-1900) and sometimes referred to as Bertrand's postulate.  This rhyming couplet celebrates that conjecture:

               Chebyshev said, and I'll say it again:
               There's always a prime between n and 2n.

Thanks to Evelyn Lamb's AMS Page-A-Day Calendar for its May 10 alert to the info above.

Mathematics...underlies everything...said the poet

     I first met scientist-poet Mary Peelen via an 2019 interview of her by mathematician-poet Gizem Karaali in The Adroit Journal .  The conversation includes an introduction to Peelen's poetry collection, Quantum Heresies (Glass Lyre Press, 2019) in which she discusses her intent "to show how mathematics and physics underlie everything in my life . . ." Read more here.

       NUMBER THEORY     by Mary Peelen

       Forty one apples in the tree,
       red and round,

       praise awaiting gravity,
       wholly free of abstraction.

       When it comes to the primes
       and matters of religion,

       I defer to Pythagoras,
       his ancient cult and authority. 

Poems and Primes

     Recently Press 53 offered a "Prime 53 Poem" poetry challenge -- to write a poem meeting these conditions:
     ·      Total syllable count of 53
     ·      Eleven total lines 
     ·      First three stanzas are three lines each with a 7 / 5 / 3 syllable count 
     ·      Final stanza must be two lines with a 5 / 3 syllable count, for a total syllable count of 53
     ·      Rhyme scheme (slant/soft rhymes are fine) aba cdc efe gg
A Prime 53 poem’s total line count is a prime number (11), the syllable count in each line is a prime number (7 / 5 / 3) with each line of the last two-line stanza a prime number (5 / 3), and the poem’s total syllable count is a prime number (53).

If 2017 was a poem title . . .

     On my shelf is a 2018 anthology entitled Women of Resistance:  Poems for a New Feminism and, in its Table of Contents, I am particularly drawn to the title that includes a prime number:  "If 2017 was a poem title" by Mahogany L. Browne.  Here is a provocative stanza from that poem:

     A Math Problem
     If 1 woman got a 7 Mac 11
     & 2 heaters for the beemer
     How many Congress seats will NRA lose?
     How many votes will it take for a sexual predator
          to lift the White House off her feet?

For more by this poet, here is a link to Black Girl Magic:  a Poem by Mahogany L. Browne (Roaring Book Press, 2018).

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   

Enter by Nov 9 -- Student Math-Poetry Contest

Contest sponsored by the American Mathematical Society

 for 

 junior-high students . . .  . senior-high students . . . college students 

 from Maryland 

WRITE A  POEM  with connections to  MATH  -- Send it to AMS

Here's a link to contest information:  www.ams.org/math-poetry  

This blog's posting for October 10 also gives some information about the student contest.