Sunday, February 27, 2011

Immense polygons of evening

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Sometimes one wonderful line makes me fall in love with a poem. I offer the following -- in which the title first draws me in and then "...
Thursday, February 24, 2011

Counting rhymes -- Catalan, Bell numbers

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     In mathematics, the Catalan numbers (named for Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan , 1814–1894, and beginning with 1, 1, 2, ...
Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Poems of set paradox and spatial dimension

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Universal Paradox      by Sandra DeLozier Coleman      One gigantic set made of all that there is      Boggles the mind with paradoxes. ...
Sunday, February 20, 2011

Black History Month -- celebrate Haynes and Hughes

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Living on the border of Washington DC I am exposed to items of local history for our nation's capital.  One such item involves the "...
Friday, February 18, 2011

Srinivasa Ramanujan

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One of the most intriguing tales in the modern history of mathematics involves Indian-born mathematician and genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (18...
4 comments:
Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Thinking about Thinking

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The question of what it means to think is never far from my focus -- and is particularly on my mind during these days that the computer Wats...
1 comment:
Monday, February 14, 2011

Puzzles, puzzlers, and parody

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     For lots of fun, go to plus online magazine at this link to find a poem that requires a knight's tour of a chess board for you to...
Saturday, February 12, 2011

Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . . )

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A perfect way to celebrate Valentine's Day -- especially for you who enjoy mathematics --  read (aloud and to each other) some "p...
Thursday, February 10, 2011

Dividing by Zero

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Fairy godmothers have their magic wands and mathematician have division by zero as a way to make the impossible happen -- for example, we ca...
Tuesday, February 8, 2011

How much math does a math-poem need?

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Poems offered in this blog vary in the levels of mathematics they contain.  One mathematical reader commented privately that in some of the ...
Sunday, February 6, 2011

Electronic poetry -- Stephanie Strickland

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     Computers offer new opportunities for poetry -- permitting new types of poems.  Animated perhaps, or hypertext, or vast manuscripts of...
Friday, February 4, 2011

AWP avoids mathematics

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I am currently attending the 2011 AWP* Conference and am disappointed that none of the sessions involves connections of writing with mathem...
Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Painting tragedy with numbers

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Although words such as "massacre" and "victim" and "buried" help us to understand the effects of disaster and ...
Monday, January 31, 2011

Romanian poets -- Cassian and Barbu

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Born in 1924, in Galati, Romania, Nina Cassian has published over fifty books -- besides poetry, she has works of fiction and books for chi...
1 comment:
Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sonnet for a geometry teacher

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Wisconsin poet Ronald Wallace has fun with math-words in the following sonnet that celebrates a teacher of plane geometry. 
Friday, January 28, 2011

Poems starring mathematicians - 8

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Even though Johnny Depp played a mathematician in his recent film, The Tourist , we don't learn much about what mathematicians think or ...
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Self-portrait with numbers

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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 wh...
Monday, January 24, 2011

Poem and parody -- isomorphic?

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In mathematics, algebraic systems that have different objects but the same structure are described as isomorphic .  The parody in poetry il...
Saturday, January 22, 2011

Integrals -- a poem

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Integrals      by Jonathan Holden      Erect, arched in disdain, the integrals drift from left across white windless pages to the right...
Thursday, January 20, 2011

Hyperbolic effects

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Last month I went to the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History -- for a photo scroll down to t...
Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Poetry inspired by Chaos

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Poet Robin Chapman studies the language learning of children -- and has collaborated with physics professor Julien Sprott on a lovely and f...
Monday, January 17, 2011

Dr King's dream and Black math students

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Today is our public celebration of the January 15 birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr (1929-1968) who was both preacher and poet in the &quo...
Friday, January 14, 2011

Rather like an elephant

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What is mathematics?            These days I am  outside of mathematics looking in and my views of the subject are more complex than during...
Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Geometry and autism

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We do not easily describe what goes on inside our own heads and have still greater difficulty seeing into the minds of others.  Pennsylvania...
2 comments:
Monday, January 10, 2011

Tribute to four teachers

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Many people offer advice about education--and, in particular, about mathematics education.  I'm skeptical of general pronouncements beca...
Friday, January 7, 2011

Which are "real" numbers?

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The adjective "real" in the term "real number" causes confusion for many whose mathematics is casual rather than intense...
Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Mathematics and race

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Sherman Alexie is a Spokane / Coeur d’Alene Indian from Wellpinit, Washington. Besides several collections of poetry, Alexie has published...
Monday, January 3, 2011

New poems from old -- by permutation

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     One of the founding members of the Oulipo , Jean Lescure (1912-2005), devised categories of permutations of selected words of a poem t...

From 2010 -- titles and dates of posts

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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 int...
Friday, December 31, 2010

The year ends -- and we go on . . .

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Immortal Helix      by Archibald MacLeish    (1892-1982) HEREUNDER Jacob Schmidt who, man and bones, Has been his hundred times around th...
Thursday, December 30, 2010

Mathematicians are NOT entitled to arrogance

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Godfrey Harold “G. H.” Hardy (1877 – 1947) was an English mathematician known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analys...
1 comment:
Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Teaching Numbers

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Californian Gary Soto   writes for both children and adults and much of his work suits both groups.  Here from A Fire in My Hands (Houghton...
Sunday, December 26, 2010

Where are the Women?

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Here is a small  square poem about a paradox that's been on my mind recently.                Little Women                In school,...
4 comments:
Tuesday, December 21, 2010

A Square for the Season

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          Now,  near the Solstice,           we turn on  bright lights           and  give gifts.  Oh, Sun,           please shorten our ...
Monday, December 20, 2010

"M" is for Mathematics and . . .

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Today's poem by Miroslav Holub  (1923-98) is square , having 5 lines of 5 letters each; it describes the letter M by using what is "...
Saturday, December 18, 2010

An Elegy from Argentina

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Mathematicians are mourning the too-soon death of  Cora Sadosky (1940-2010) on December 3.  Born in Argentina, Sadosky earned her doctoral ...
Thursday, December 16, 2010

Can we trust numbers?

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Poet Lucia Perillo was honored Monday evening, December 13 at the Library of Congress -- as her collection Inseminating the Elephant won t...
Wednesday, December 15, 2010

New poems from old -- by substitution

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Poet Lee Ann Brown was the featured poet at the November, 2010 Conference on Constrained Poetry  at UNC Ashville; this conference celebrate...
Monday, December 13, 2010

Satire Against Reason . . .

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     John Wilmot (1647-1680), 2nd Earl of Rochester , was a friend of King Charles II, and author of much satirical and bawdy poetry. Even t...
Saturday, December 11, 2010

Cryptography -- an MAA lecture and a poem

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     Living near the Silver Spring metro station, on the border of Washington, DC, makes travel to the offices of the Mathematical Associati...
Thursday, December 9, 2010

8 January 2011 -- Math-Poetry at JMM

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Here's an invitation for math-poets -- at 5 PM on Saturday, January 8 at the 2011 Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans there will ...
Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Poems starring mathematicians -- 7

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Activist mathematician Chandler Davis  -- an editor of The Mathematical Intelligencer , career mathematician at the University of Toronto, ...
Monday, December 6, 2010

Are all mathematicians equal?

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My first posting for this blog (on March 23, 2010 ) featured one of my earliest poems, a tribute to mathematician Emmy Noether (1882 -1935)...
3 comments:
Saturday, December 4, 2010

Horizon line

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Poet James Galvin often uses mathematical imagery in his poems.    Art Class       by James Galvin       Let us begin with a simple lin...
Thursday, December 2, 2010

Will I really NEED algebra after school?

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For those of us who create and teach mathematics, algebra is one of our much-used language skills.  We cannot imagine lives in which we do n...
Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Minimal poem from Saroyan

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This poem appears in Complete Minimal Poems by Aram Saroyan ( Ugly Duckling Presse , 2007).  Another of Saroyan's minimal poems was...
1 comment:
Sunday, November 28, 2010

Poetry with base 10

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In his collection, Rational Numbers ( Truman State , 2000) Harvey Hix presents "Orders of Magnitude" -- a collection of 100 sta...
Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A square riddle -- by Sylvia Plath

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Metaphors      by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two...
Monday, November 22, 2010

Butterfly Effects

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An equation or system of equations is said to be "ill-conditioned" if a small change in input data can produce a very large change...
2 comments:
Saturday, November 20, 2010

More from Guillevic

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     My October 13 post  presented three small poems by the French poet Guillevic (1909-97).  Strongly drawn to his work, I have purchased ...
1 comment:
Friday, November 19, 2010

Syllable-Sestina -- a square permutation poem

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Some poetry is " free verse " but many poems are crafted by following some sort of form or constraint--they might be sonnets or ba...
Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Celebrate Constraints -- Happy Birthday, OULIPO

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Patrick Bahls and Richard Chess of the University of North Carolina at Ashville have organized a " Conference on Constrained Poetry &...
Monday, November 15, 2010

Special square stanzas

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My   recent posting  ( November 14 )  of a symmetric stanza by Lewis Carroll illustrates one variety of  "square" poem -- in which...
Sunday, November 14, 2010

Symmetric stanza

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Although the following stanza by mathematician-author  Lewis Carroll  first appears to be a merely melodramatic example of Victorian verse, ...
Thursday, November 11, 2010

Theorem-proof / Cut-up / poems

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     For mathematicians, reading a well-crafted proof that turns toward its conclusion with elegance and perhaps surprise -- this mirrors a...
1 comment:
Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Minimal Poem

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This poem appears in Complete Minimal Poems by Aram Saroyan ( Ugly Duckling Presse , 2007).
Monday, November 8, 2010

One type of "mathematical" poetry

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When I began (in the 1980s) collecting examples of "mathematical poetry," I sought lines of verse that included some mathematical ...
1 comment:
Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Troubles with math, expressed poetically

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     Should I admit that I sometimes feel a bit of resentment toward people who are insistently articulate about their difficulties with mat...
2 comments:
Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Creation from "nothing"

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     Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern (1871-1914) was a German writer whose poetry often involved paradox or nonsense and whose wi...
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 ...