Self-portrait with numbers

Visual poet Geof Huth  lives and blogs in Schenectady, NY.  In 2010 he turned 50 and early in 2011 he sent me (via snail mail, on smooth white paper) a letter.  The letter is a poem; the poem is a celebration of life, a sort of self-portrait, using numbers.  Geof gave me permission to post it here.

From 2010 -- titles and dates of posts

List of postings  March 23 - December 31, 2010
A scroll through the 12 months of titles below may lead you to topics and poets/poems of interest. Also helpful may be the SEARCH box at the top of the right-hand column; there you may enter names or terms that you would like to find herein.
    Dec 31  The year ends -- and we go on . . .
    Dec 30  Mathematicians are NOT entitled to arrogance
    Dec 28  Teaching Numbers
    Dec 26  Where are the Women?
    Dec 21  A Square for the Season
    Dec 20  "M" is for Mathematics and . . .  

Theorem-proof / Cut-up / poems

     For mathematicians, reading a well-crafted proof that turns toward its conclusion with elegance and perhaps surprise -- this mirrors an encounter with poetry.  But can one have that poetry-math experience without being fluent in the language of mathematics?  Below I offer a proof (a version of Euclid's proof of the infinitude of primes) and a "cut-up" produced from that proof-- and I invite readers (both mathematical and non-mathematical) to consider them as poems.

One type of "mathematical" poetry

When I began (in the 1980s) collecting examples of "mathematical poetry," I sought lines of verse that included some mathematical terminology.  More recently, my view has expanded to include structual, visual, and algorithmic influcences from mathematics; however, the two samples from the work of William Blake (1757-1827), presented below, fit into that initial category -- selected as "mathematical" because of their vocabulary -- one speaks of "infinity," the other of "symmetry."  (Blake was an artist as well as poet and his volumes of poetry were illustrated with his prints.)  The following stanza is the opening quatrain for Blake's poem "Auguries of Innocence." 

Visual Poetry -- from Karl Kempton

Poet Karl Kempton offers readers a great variety of visual poetry -- often including elements of mathematics. Kaz Maslanka's MathematicalBlogspot , Geof Huth's Visualizing Poetics blog, and Dan Waber's Logolalia offer introductions to the work of Kempton and other visual poets.  Here are three samples from Karl's collection,  3 Cubed: Mathematical Poems, 1976 - 2003  (Runaway Spoon Press, 2003). 

In the same family -- a poet and a mathematician

When a poet and a mathematician are members of the same family, understandings result.  Ohio poet Cathryn Essinger is a twin of a mathematician and writes about this relationship.  Here are opening stanzas of two of her poems.

Poetry-and-Math -- Interdisciplinary Courses

     On July 1 my posting considered math-poetry anthologies and began with a reference to Against Infinity, the discovery of which was a catalyst for my own inclusion of poetry in my mathematics classrooms.  Other mathematicians and writers have gone further and developed interdisciplinary courses--such courses are the topic for this posting. 
     I begin with a small item from Against Infinity, this one a "Found Poem" by Elaine Romaine (found in the math textbook Calclulus on Manifolds by Michael Spivak):

Digital poetry -- Stephanie Strickland et al

Stephanie Strickland writes with mastery of numbers, as we see in her poem below.  But numbers are only the beginning of her work.  A director of the Electronic Poetry Association and author of "Born Digital," Strickland is one of the leaders in the development of new types of poems that are constructed using animation and rearrangements and other visual and aural communications made possible by computers and the internet.

Poetry with mathematical symbols

On the internet and elsewhere a variety of viewpoints are expressed about the criteria poetry should satisfy to be "mathematical." Today I want to introduce samples and links for three writers:   Bob Grumman (Florida), Gregory Vincent St Thomasino (New York), and Kaz Maslanka (California).  Grumman and Maslanka write poems with a strong visual element and, as the blogs and comments for all three testify, they differ in their views of what may be properly called "mathematical" poetry..

The epitome -- Euler's Identity

Mathematics is a visual language.  As with poetry, placement on the page is a key ingredient of meaning.  Here is one of my favorite visual poems, "The Transcendence of Euler's Formula," by Neil Hennessy, a Canadian poet and computer scientist.  For additional math-poetry from Neil, follow the link.

          epitome
          epitome
          epitome
          epi+ome
          epItome
          _____________
          epit0me

A Numerical Poem (Fibonacci)

Consider the following poem involving the Fibonacci numbers:
 

        1/89 = .0        +

                  .01        +

                  .001        +

                  .0002        +

                  .00003        +             

                  .000005        +

                  .0000008        +

                  .00000013        +

                  .000000021        +

                  .0000000034        +

                  .00000000055        +

                  .000000000089        +

                  .0000000000144        +

                  .  ...