Showing posts sorted by date for query square stanza. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query square stanza. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Monday, November 15, 2010

Special square stanzas

My recent posting (November 14)  of a symmetric stanza by Lewis Carroll illustrates one variety of  "square" poem -- in which the number of words per line is the same as the number of lines.  My own square poems (for examples, see October 7 or June 9) are syllable-squares; that is, each stanza has the same number of syllables per line as there are lines. Lisa McCool's poem below is, like Carroll's, a word-square; in McCool's poem --  in addition to the 6x6 shape -- the first words of each line, when read down, match the first line of the poem, and the last words of each line, when read down, match the last line of the poem.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

From "Red Has No Reason" -- a poem about the nature of mathematics

My new poetry book, Red Has No Reason, is now available (from Plain View Press or amazon.com).  Several of the poems mention math--and one of them comments on the nature of mathematics.  Ideas for "A Taste of Mathematics" (below) came from a mathematics conference in San Antonio, TX (January 1993) where it was announced that the billionth digit in the decimal expansion of  π  is 9.  Recently an amazing  new calculation record of 5 trillion digits (claimed by Alexander J. Yee and Shigeru Kondo) has been announced.

Friday, April 9, 2010

April: along with baseball we celebrate poetry and mathematics

Is it coincidence or design that

     April  is  National Poetry Month
            
           and

   April  is  Mathematics Awareness Month
          (This year's theme is  "mathematics and sports")

In my own reading, baseball is the sport for which I have found the most poetry.