Sunday, October 31, 2010

The Fib -- a form that gathers strength

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The "Fib" is a poetry form in which the numbers of syllables per line follow the pattern of the Fibonacci numbers.  (See also Apri...
Friday, October 29, 2010

Ghost stories in algebra -- Happy Halloween!

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Born in Yugoslavia, Charles Simic emigrated at age 15 to Chicago; widely known and respected as a poet and teacher (at the University of Ne...
1 comment:
Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Continuing Climate Concerns

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     Split This Rock , an activist confederation of poets concerned with vital human issues, has directed attention to environmental concern...
Tuesday, October 26, 2010

A Lemma by Constance Reid

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Constance Reid (1918-2010), died on October 14.  Sister of a mathematician (Julia Robinson), Reid wrote first about life in World War II fa...
1 comment:
Monday, October 25, 2010

Writing poetry like mathematics

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In an article about the Chilean mathematician and poet Nicanor Parra , Paul M Pearson says , :  "Parra almost wrote poetry like he woul...
2 comments:
Saturday, October 23, 2010

"The Equation" by Owen Sheers

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This posting is brief to encourage you to have time to read  Owen Sheers ' fine poem several times and let it settle in and be part of y...
Thursday, October 21, 2010

I miss you, Martin Gardner

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Martin Gardner (1914-2010), featured also in my June 6 posting , would have been 96 years old today--October 21, 2010.  All over the world ...
1 comment:
Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Giraffe -- novel (& prose poem) by May Swenson

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Poet and playright May Swenson (1913-89) was born in Utah to Mormon parents and grew up in a home in which Swedish was the primary language...
1 comment:
Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Length of a Coastline

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In the nineties, fifteen or so years ago, when I began posting mathematical poems on the Internet, two of my earliest connections were Ken S...
1 comment:
Friday, October 15, 2010

Voices in a Geometry Classroom

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I have been invited to return next week ( October 20 at 7 PM ) to Bloomsburg University, where I taught mathematics for lots of years, for a...
2 comments:
Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic

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My introduction to French poet Guillevic (1909-97) came from UK poet Tim Love who found three of his triangle poems translated into Italia...
1 comment:
Monday, October 11, 2010

Varieties of palindromes in poetry

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My posting for October 6  mentioned palindromes. Today we continue with the topic, including illustrations of the various ways they may infl...
Saturday, October 9, 2010

"The Seventh" by Attila Jozsef

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Attila József (1905-1937)  is one of the most important Hungarian poets of the 20th century.       The Seventh    by Attila József      ...
Thursday, October 7, 2010

Squares of Climate Concern

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The square  (with as many lines as syllables per line) is a poetry-form that has existed   for centuries  and is now enjoying a revival.  He...
Wednesday, October 6, 2010

"Poetry, in other words, is mathematics"

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From Tim Love , British poet and member of the Computer Systems Group in the Engineering Department at Cambridge University, I received thi...
2 comments:
Monday, October 4, 2010

"The Reckoning" by M. Sorescu (Romania,1936-96)

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Works by poet and playwright   Marin Sorescu (1936-1996) continue to be popular with Romanian readers--and he is one of the most-frequently...
1 comment:
Sunday, October 3, 2010

Art, poetry, and mathematics -- and Rafael Alberti

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On September 23 I was privileged to hear Annalisa Crannell , mathematics professor at Lancaster's Franklin and Marshall College, speak o...
Friday, October 1, 2010

Nursing--and other vital applications of counting

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     Although counting is one of the basic activities of mathematics, its importance also extends to the highest mathematical levels.  We co...
Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Is mathematics discovered -- or invented?

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The issue of whether mathematics is invented or discovered is posed often.  Less frequently, queries as to where poetry falls in these cate...
Monday, September 27, 2010

Ideal Geometry -- complex politics

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Christopher Morley (1890-1957) was an American poet, novelist, and publisher who was the son of a poet and musician (Lilian Janet Bird) and...
Friday, September 24, 2010

Reflections on the Transfinite

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      Georg Cantor (1845-1918), a German mathematician, first dared to think the counter-intuitive notion that not all infinite sets have t...
Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Goldbach's conjecture -- easily stated but unsolved

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This blog's July 20 posting featured work from poets who have spouses or siblings who are mathematicians.  Today, introducing the work ...
2 comments:
Monday, September 20, 2010

The Magic of Numbers -- Kenneth Koch

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I first became acquainted with  Kenneth Koch (1925-2002)   through his small and hugely valuable paperback of teaching strategies, Wishes, L...
Saturday, September 18, 2010

Visual Poetry -- from Karl Kempton

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Poet Karl Kempton offers readers a great variety of visual poetry -- often including elements of mathematics. Kaz Maslanka's Mathemati...
Thursday, September 16, 2010

Prisoner's Dilemma -- and permutations

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In game theory's original, single-play, Prisoner's Dilemma problem, two prisoners each are given the choice between silence and bet...
Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Ghosts of Departed Quantities

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     Years ago in calculus class I excitedly learned that an infinite number of terms may have a finite sum.  Manipulation of infinities see...
Sunday, September 12, 2010

Word Play with the Hypotenuse

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Here we have a playful treatment of the language of the Pythagorean Theorem in "Talking Big" by John Bricuth . 
Thursday, September 9, 2010

Grasping at TIME

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Different persons experience time differently -- as illustrated by the few lines included below (part II of  "Time" from my new co...
1 comment:
Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Against Intuition

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One of my favorite poets (mentioned previously for her poem, "Pi" in my  September 6 posting ) is the Polish Nobelist (1996) Wisla...
Monday, September 6, 2010

More of Pi in Poetry

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Recording artist Kate Bush has written a song entitled “Pi” which includes some of π's digits in the lyrics . Likewise, Polish Nobelist ...
Thursday, September 2, 2010

Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi

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Calculated at the website,  WolframAlpha , here are the first fifty-nine digits of the irrational number π (ratio of a circle's circumfe...
2 comments:
Monday, August 30, 2010

What is the point? -- consider Euclid

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A two-line poem by Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda (1904-73), found in my bilingual edition of Extravagaria , reminded me of the poetic nature ...
Thursday, August 26, 2010

"Two Pair" by Howard Nemerov

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This poem by Howard Nemrov (1920-1991) uses scientific terminology in ways that seem especially deft:    Two Pair    More money's l...
Monday, August 23, 2010

The Irrational Sonnet -- An Oulipian form

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An irrational sonnet has 14 lines, just as the traditional sonnet, but differs in its stanza-division and rhyme:  there are five stanzas--co...
Thursday, August 19, 2010

From Miroslav Holub -- a reflection on accuracy

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In applications of mathematics, as in other scientific research, it is important to distinguish between the precision of measurements (how ...
Wednesday, August 18, 2010

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

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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 o...
Monday, August 16, 2010

Poetry and applied mathematics

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Back in the 1980's when I began taking examples of poetry into my mathematics classrooms at Bloomsburg University , I think that I justi...
Saturday, August 14, 2010

Zero-sum game -- in a poem by Okigbo

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Game theory (with origins in the 1930s) was initially developed to analyze competitive decisions in which one individual does better at anot...
Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Excitement in mathematics classrooms

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Poems from three women illustrate a range of emotional content in the mathematics classroom:  Rita Dove's "Geometry" captures ...
1 comment:
Sunday, August 8, 2010

A poem of calculus (of ants on a worm)

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Philip Wexler  plays with the terminology of calculus in this poem:        The Calculus of Ants on a Worm      Swarming tiny      bodie...
Thursday, August 5, 2010

Snowballs -- growing/shrinking lines

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Today's post explores poetic structures called snowballs  developed by the Oulipo (see also March 25 posting ) and known to many throug...
Saturday, July 31, 2010

What nobody else has thought

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     Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986) was a Hungarian Biochemist who discovered Vitamin C and won the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine.  Szent...
Thursday, July 29, 2010

A wedding song -- shaped by mathematics

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This posting includes a stanza from of "A Wedding on Earth" by Annie Finch .  In the poet's words: the poem has 11 stanzas wit...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Poets who Count

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For some poets, counting is part of the language of the poem. For others, counting determines the structure. Here are two poems of the forme...
1 comment:
Monday, July 26, 2010

Trouble with Math in School

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      Sad and lonely experiences seem to produce more poems than joyful ones.  And so it is easier to find a poem about a trouble in a math ...
Saturday, July 24, 2010

The infinitude of ecstacy -- a la Israel Lewis

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Israel Lewis is the pen name of a polymath who earned his living as a scientist and is a writer in his retirement.  His webpage offers a ...
Thursday, July 22, 2010

Mathematics in poetry by Nichita Stanescu

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     Though formerly a math professor, my recent teaching has involved poetry--and I have been fortunate to spend several summer months at S...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

In the same family -- a poet and a mathematician

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When a poet and a mathematician are members of the same family, understandings result.  Ohio poet Cathryn Essinger is a twin of a mathemati...
Sunday, July 18, 2010

David Blackwell (1919 - 2010) -- and Game Theory

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     David Blackwell, the first black scholar to be admitted to the National Academy of Sciences, a probabilist and statistician, died early...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Ray Bobo's mathematical poem

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Ray Bobo , a retired Georgetown mathematics professor, has written a love poem with mathematical symbols.  And, for those of us who might be...
1 comment:
Monday, July 12, 2010

Poetry-application of The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic

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Destructive effects of human greed and neglect on the earth's natural environment are echoed hauntingly in the repetitions within "...
Friday, July 9, 2010

Jordie Albiston -- structure behind the writing

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       I love sonnets and the one below by Jordie Albiston is a favorite of mine.      Albiston is an Australian poet with a sense of orc...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Poetry-and-Math -- Interdisciplinary Courses

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     On July 1 my posting considered math-poetry anthologies and began with a reference to Against Infinity , the discovery of which was a ...
Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Digital poetry -- Stephanie Strickland et al

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Stephanie Strickland writes with mastery of numbers, as we see in her poem below.  But numbers are only the beginning of her work.  A direc...
Thursday, July 1, 2010

Poetry with Mathematics -- Anthologies

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More than thirty years ago at a mathematics conference book exhibit I stumbled upon Against Infinity:  An Anthology of Contemporary Mathemat...
Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Mathematics, like poetry, is ART

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Doing mathematics is often misunderstood as primarily computation--an error that seems equivalent to seeing poetry writing as primarily a sp...
Monday, June 21, 2010

Poetry with mathematical symbols

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On the internet and elsewhere a variety of viewpoints are expressed about the criteria poetry should satisfy to be "mathematical."...
Friday, June 18, 2010

Three poems with the word "axiom"

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Poems that contain  "number" are numerous; those with "axiom" are less easily found.  Here are 3 of them -- by 19th cent...
Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Send your math-poems to QUARC

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Canadian journal seeks submissions from poets or fiction writers whose work makes use of metaphors from the sciences or engages scientific ...
Monday, June 14, 2010

Girls and Mathematics

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In Indiana, Pennsylvania, my senior high school advanced math teacher was Laura Church--a Barnard College graduate and a flamboyant silver-h...
Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Square comment on shoe styles

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     Recently I have returned to Silver Spring from a trip to Latvia , traveling with a friend who was born there.  My effort to find poetry...
3 comments:
Monday, June 7, 2010

Celebrate Martin Gardner (1914-2010)

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Martin Gardner described his relationship to poetry as that of "occasional versifier" -- he is the author, for example, of:    ...
Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Discovering the Secret

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In this Robert Frost couplet, “The Secret Sits,”  the poet may not have intended to speak of mathematics but his lines sing true for mathem...
1 comment:
Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Glances at Infinity

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Counter-intuitive notions are among my favorite parts of mathematics and, in considerations of infinity, these are numerous.  Recalling Zeno...
Monday, May 17, 2010

Sense and Nonsense

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     Nonsense verse has a prominent place in the poetry that mathematicians enjoy. Perhaps this is so because mathematical discovery itself...
Friday, May 14, 2010

Poems starring mathematicians - 6 (Mandelbrot)

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More familiar than the name Benoit Mandelbrot are images, like the one to the left, of the fractal that bears his name .  Born in Poland ...
1 comment:
Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The epitome -- Euler's Identity

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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 ...
Monday, May 10, 2010

Margaret Cavendish (1623-73) -- The Circle of the Brain cannot be Squared

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Margaret Cavendish (1623-73) was a writer who published under her own name at a time when most women published anonymously.  Her writing ad...
Thursday, May 6, 2010

Mathematical 'grooks' from Piet Hein

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Piet Hein (Denmark, 1905-1996) was many-faceted--by times a philosopher, mathematician, designer, scientist, inventor of games and poet. He...
Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Poems starring mathematicians - 5

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In my own library this next poem is found (untitled) in Collected Sonnets by Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950),  but it also is found onl...
Thursday, April 29, 2010

A Numerical Poem (Fibonacci)

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Consider the following poem involving the Fibonacci numbers:           1/89 = .0        +                   .01        +                   ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Poems starring mathematicians - 4

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Each of today's poems is in the voice of a student who looks back.  First, from Carol Dorf, a poem to the author of a book--written as a...
Monday, April 26, 2010

Poems starring mathematicians - 3

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Today's poems illustrate the satirical humor and rhyme that frequently inhabit poems by mathematicians. (Previous postings of poems abou...
Friday, April 23, 2010

Poems of Calculus

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In her thoughtful poem " Calculus " mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz writes of sharing with her students some of their subject...
Thursday, April 22, 2010

A Square for Earth Day

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Greetings on EARTH DAY.  Earth's inhabitants today pay a price not only for our own careless habits but also for earlier ignorance about...
Wednesday, April 21, 2010

April -- Poetry, Math, and Boxing

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April continues—both as National Poetry Month and as Mathematics Awareness Month (with theme math and sports ).  As in the April 9 posting...
Monday, April 19, 2010

Poems with Fibonacci number patterns

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In 21st century poetry, there are a variety of non-rhyming forms--and several of them have derived from the Fibonacci numbers. *  The Danis...
5 comments:
Thursday, April 15, 2010

Poems starring mathematicians - 2

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P ublished a century later than William Benjamin Smith's "The Merman and the Seraph" (see April 14 posting ) we have Crossing ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Poems starring mathematicians - 1

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This is the first in a series of postings involving poems in which the principal subject is a mathematician.      In “The Ideal Mathematic...
1 comment:
Monday, April 12, 2010

Poetry and Mathematics -- Similarities

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HOW are mathematics and poetry similar? Often-quoted in mathematical circles are words from mathematician Karl Weierstrass (1815-97)...
2 comments:
Friday, April 9, 2010

April: along with baseball we celebrate poetry and mathematics

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Is it coincidence or design that       April  is   National Poetry Month                          and    April  is  Mathematics Awaren...
5 comments:
Thursday, April 8, 2010

Braided lines form a PANTOUM

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The pantoum is derived from a Malaysian form of interlocking four-line stanzas in which lines 2 and 4 of one stanza are used as lines 1 and...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010

John Donne's numbers

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       Perhaps best known for the religious themes in his poetry, John Donne (1572-1631) also wrote many love poems. Although the mathematic...
2 comments:
Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Miroslav Holub, poet and scientist

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Miroslav Holub (1923-1998), Czech poet and immunologist who excelled in both endeavors, is one of my favorite poets.  He combines scientif...
Monday, March 29, 2010

"Mathematical" Limericks

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A dozen, a gross, and a score Plus three times the square root of four      Divided by seven      Plus five times eleven Is nine squared...
5 comments:
Sunday, March 28, 2010

W. H. Auden's Kingdom of Number

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Some poetry is termed "mathematical" because mathematical terminology is included in the text of the poem, often to vivid effect. ...
3 comments:
Thursday, March 25, 2010

Queneau and the Oulipo

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Raymond Queneau was one of the leaders of a group of ten--primarily writers and mathematicians, primarily French--who founded a group, ...
3 comments:
Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Howard Nemerov's mathematical imagery

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GETTING IT RIGHT IN LANGUAGE -- Poets and mathematicians alike are concerned with precise statement. Two-time US Poet Laureate Howard Nemero...
1 comment:
Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Poetry of Logical Ideas

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When the NY Times failed to publish an obituary following the death of noted algebraist Amalie "Emmy" Noether , Albert Einstein c...
3 comments: