April celebrates poetry and mathematics -- it being both National Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month -- and this year's math-theme is "Mathematics, Statistics, and the Data Deluge." What better way to mark these joint occasions than with a poem of statistics. I first learned of Eveline Pye -- a lively and interesting Glasgow statistician, teacher, and poet -- through "Eveline Pye: Poetry in Numbers" in the September 2011 issue of the statistics magazine, Significance.
Here is one of the poems found therein, aptly titled "Statistics."
Showing posts sorted by date for query szymborska. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query szymborska. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Poems with Numbers
Hats off to the organizers and presenters at the 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival held in DC this past weekend. Great poets, great programs, fantastically good company all around!!!
Saturday at the festival, Denny Shaw and I led a panel-workshop, "Counting On," in which we encouraged poets to use numbers to illuminate their poems of witness and protest. Our samples of vivid effects of numbers included: "At Arlington" by Wiley Clements, "The Idea of Ancestry" by Etheridge Knight, "Numbers for the Week" by Joan Mazza, “On Ibrahim Balaban’s Painting ‘The Prison Gates’” by Nazim Hikmet, “The Stalin Epigram” by Osip Mandlestam, “Bosnia, Bosnia” by June Jordan, “The Terrorist: He’s Watching” by Wislawa Szymborska, and “Four Five Six” by Rosemary Winslow.
Poetry from our workshop participants will be posted here when it is gathered. We focused on humanitarian and political concerns -- and used our workshop writing times to try for poems that use numbers in their imagery. Here are two samples from me (both syllable-squares).
Our jails hold
5 times more
blacks than whites.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Universal and Particular -- Szymborska
Like Yves Bonnefoy (21 February 2012 posting), Wislawa Szymborska (who died on 1 February 2012) was born in 1923. Like him she was concerned with the connections of the universal and the particular. Here, in "A Large Number," she reflects, as she did in "A Contribution to Statistics," on the human meaning that lies behind numbers:
Labels:
number,
particularity,
poetry,
random,
space,
universal,
Wislawa Szymborska
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Be My Valentine
Unlike many newspapers, the British Guardian publishes poems -- and, on February 10, 2012, they offered a selection to celebrate the upcoming Valentine's day. Included, among work by more than a dozen notables, are poems by Wislawa Szymborska, John Donne, Derek Walcott (whose poem "Love After Love" is one of my favorites), Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Byron, and Carol Ann Duffy -- and a poem by John Fuller that is seasoned with some mathematical terminology. You will need to visit the Guardian article online for the whole of Fuller 's poem, "Valentine," but here are several snippets to whet your interest. (Enjoy the fun of rhyming mathematics with attics!)
Labels:
Boolean,
differentiate,
Guardian,
John Fuller,
love poem,
mathematician,
mathematics,
Valentine
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Szymborska (1923-2012) on Statistics
Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) won the 1996 Nobel Prize for literature; I am saddened by her death -- yesterday, February 1, at her home in Krakow. But one cannot help but rejoice for her poems. Szymborska did not shy from use of mathematical ideas. As in this sample:
A Contribution to Statistics by Wislawa Szymborska
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
-- fifty-two,
A Contribution to Statistics by Wislawa Szymborska
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
-- fifty-two,
Labels:
mathematics,
Nobel Prize,
poetry,
statistics,
Wislawa Szymborska
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Against Intuition
One of my favorite poets (mentioned previously for her poem, "Pi" in my September 6 posting) is the Polish Nobelist (1996) Wislawa Szymborska. Her language is apt and spare, her thoughts are wise, and her gentle humor is frequent.
Labels:
Baranczak,
Cavanagh,
counter-intuitive,
David Hilbert,
infinite,
Janet Lewis,
mathematics,
paradox,
poetry,
set,
Wislawa Szymborska
Monday, September 6, 2010
More of Pi in Poetry
Recording artist Kate Bush has written a song entitled “Pi” which includes some of π's digits in the lyrics. Likewise, Polish Nobelist (1996) Wislawa Szymborska also features its digits in her poem, “Pi,” which begins:
Labels:
calculation,
circle,
circumference,
compact,
diameter,
digits,
infinite,
irrational,
pi,
Robert Morgan,
transcendental,
Wislawa Szymborska
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