Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Fear of math

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California poet Carol Dorf  is a high school math teacher (and has taught in a science museum) -- and images from math and science permeate ...
Monday, May 30, 2011

Once a student of Euclid

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The Chair     by Charles Simic The chair was once a student of Euclid.
Friday, May 27, 2011

The Bridges of Konigsberg

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From the August 1997 issue of The Mathematical Intelligencer , we have this poem by Judith Saunders  about a long-standing puzzle solved so...
Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Hikmet -- painting with numbers

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Living is no laughing matter . . .  These are words of Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist Nazim Hikmet (1902-63), who spent ...
Sunday, May 22, 2011

Spacetime

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   Spacetime      by Miroslav Holub (1932-1998)    When I grow up and you get small,    then --
Thursday, May 19, 2011

Personal geometry

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We have recently passed the first anniversary of the death (6 May 2010) of Elena Shvarts, one of Russia's finest contemporary poets. H...
Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Poems with permutations

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     Below, in the  May 16 posting, this blog considered all of the permutations of a few words -- in search of "the best" arrang...
3 comments:
Monday, May 16, 2011

Which is the BEST order?

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At Bartleby.com , we find  a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) which says, in part " ... poetry—the best words in their b...
2 comments:
Friday, May 13, 2011

Would rationalists wear sombreros?

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This final section of "Six Significant Landscapes," by attorney and insurance executive (and poet) Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), p...
Wednesday, May 11, 2011

If p, then q.

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     Today's posting (as also on April 13 )  presents variations of the conditional statment -- a sentence of the form "If ___, th...
Monday, May 9, 2011

Poetry generators

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Blogger  edde addad  had an undergraduate major in creative writing -- and later earned a PhD in computer science.  He has written about and...
Friday, May 6, 2011

Permuting words and and enumerating poems

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Caleb Emmons teaches mathematics at Pacific University.  Here is his very-clever description of the requirements for a poem to be a sestina...
1 comment:
Wednesday, May 4, 2011

A jar in Tennessee

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     Several of my early insights concerning the connections between poetry and mathematics grew from ideas presented by poet Jonathan Holde...
Friday, April 29, 2011

Forgetful Number

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A lovely poem about more than a number . . .     Forgetful Number   by Vasko Popa     Once upon a time there was a number     Pure and ...
Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Perpendicularity -- a symmetric relation

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     In 2010 both my October 13 and November 20 posts feature small poems by the French poet Guillevic (1909-97). Strongly drawn to his...
Saturday, April 23, 2011

Attitudes of Numbers

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     I like Bruce Snider 's "The Certainty of Numbers" (which you may already have found online at The Poetry Foundation web...
Thursday, April 21, 2011

Earth Day, 2011

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      My father, a farmer, was respectful of our earth's resources.  Replenish what you take , he taught.   But some of us consume witho...
Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Two and four and eight and birds

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Pennsylvanian  Craig Czury works as a travelling poet in schools, homeless shelters, prisons, mental hospitals, and community centers aroun...
Monday, April 18, 2011

Teaching math with a poem

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Sarah Glaz is an algebraist (University of Connecticut) who uses poetry to teach mathematics. At her web page , scroll down to "Recent...
Sunday, April 17, 2011

A picture should extend beyond its frame

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Since April is Mathematics Awareness Month -- with theme "Unraveling Complex Systems" -- this blogger has been seeking out poems ...
Thursday, April 14, 2011

Finding poems with "numbers"

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     Here's a quick and enjoyable activity:      Go to the website for The Poetry Foundation.    Browse for a bit and, when you have co...
Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Conditional statements

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The "If ... , then ... ." statements of mathematical theorems are often termed "conditionals." We have, for example, the...
1 comment:
Sunday, April 10, 2011

What can mathematics do?

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For many, mathematics offers interpretive links between a mind and the truths it seeks to know,  the same role that a story plays in this po...
2 comments:
Thursday, April 7, 2011

A poetic perspective on algebra

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     Last Monday (April 4), the Washington Post had an article concerning the value of Algebra II   as a predictor of college and work succ...
Tuesday, April 5, 2011

What color is 3?

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     Long before there were six-digit hexadecimal codes for color (red #FF0000 or green #000800), there were paint-by-number craft activiti...
2 comments:
Sunday, April 3, 2011

April -- month of poetry and mathematics

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April is both National Poetry Month and  Mathematics Awareness Month   (with theme this year being "Unraveling Complex Systems")....
Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Coleridge: A Mathematical Problem

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 "A Mathematical Problem" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge  (1772-1834) -- found online at Elite Skills Classics  -- uses verse to descr...
Sunday, March 27, 2011

The Nightmare of an Unsolved Problem

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Back in the 1980s when I first met the Collatz conjecture in a number theory textbook it was stated this way:      Start with any whole nu...
Thursday, March 24, 2011

Numbers are more than numbers

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Today, a poem in three parts, "Trouble with Numbers" -- from the collection Mathematics and Other Poems by  William Wall . 
Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Celebrating Newman's "World of Mathematics"

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Lionel Deimel is a database and Web site designer, a steam locomotive enthusiast, a cat lover, an essayist and a poet who maintains an ecle...
Sunday, March 20, 2011

Counting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . .

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At Peter Cameron's Blog, " Counting the things that need to be counted ," the July 14, 2010 entry contains a reflective poem...
Friday, March 18, 2011

Who are our prophets?

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Here is the opening sentence of an article , "Mathematicians and Poets," by Cai Tianxin, a mathematics professor at Zhejiang Unive...
Wednesday, March 16, 2011

9 9-square stanzas

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In the current (March 21, 2011) issue of The New Yorker ( pages 46-47 ) may be found the poem "Green Farmhouse Chairs" by Donald ...
Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Remembering Pi-day, a day late

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Yesterday (3-14) was Pi-day, but my recent thoughts have been focused on my math-teacher son Eric (who has acute pancreatitis) and his famil...
Sunday, March 13, 2011

Teaching Math

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When I was a new professor in the 1970s at Bloomsburg University (then Bloomsburg State College) my colleague PH and I discussed our teachin...
Monday, March 7, 2011

Numerology

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On her website Deanna Rubin describes herself this way, "I have a degree in Technical Writing and Computer Science from Carnegie Mello...
1 comment:
Friday, March 4, 2011

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics -- V1, Issue 1

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A new door has opened for those of us interested in the humanistic aspects of mathematics.  Under the able leadership of editors Mark Huber ...
3 comments:
Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Perfect as soap bubbles

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An alert to today's poem came from Greg Coxson, a University of Wisconsin-educated, Silver Spring-based, radar engineer who loves mathem...
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 ...
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...