Friday, January 31, 2014

On shoulders of giants . . .

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     Washington, DC is a city rich with both poetry and mathematics.  Last Tuesday evening I attended a Mathematical Association of America ...
Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Little Boxes

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It is hard to know what to say. Pete Seeger died yesterday at age 94.   94 = 2 x 47.  47 is prime. Here is a link to Pete singing "...

Graffiti Calculus

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     In my dreams I am an artist -- a cartoonist, perhaps, or a graffiti artist -- so skilled with lines and curves and so clever that my ar...
Saturday, January 25, 2014

Mathematics is like . . .

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For angling may be said to be so like the mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt; at least not so fully,  but that there will s...
Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Extraneous -- and so on

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     Since my junior high math days, when I first heard the word "extraneous," I have loved the sound of it, the feel of my mouth ...
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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Word problems

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       Scarcity:  Why Having Too Little Means So Much (a Times book by S. Mullainathan and E. Shafir, released last September) considers n...
Sunday, January 19, 2014

Poems and primes

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Friday morning, 1-17-2014, looking north from the Baltimore Convention Center        This past week I enjoyed Thursday and Friday at ...
Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Poetry-with-math, Jan 17, Baltimore

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Please join us!  A Reading of Poetry with Mathematics   Friday,  January 17, 2014   4:30 - 6:30 PM  Room 308  Baltimore Convention Cent...
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Monday, January 13, 2014

Writing mathy poems - a student activity

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On the web-page of mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz I found a link to this file of math-related poems that she prompted students to write whe...
Friday, January 10, 2014

The discipline of mathematics

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This poem remembers one of my students.        The Prince of Algebra       by JoAnne Growney        Madam Professor,        let me intro...
Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Martin Gardner, again

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     This past weekend a review by Teller (magician of the Penn & Teller team) of an autobiography of Martin Gardner appeared in the ...
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Friday, January 3, 2014

Count what counts

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When I visited Iceland last month, I looked in the bookstores of Reykjavik for bilingual (Icelandic-English) poetry collections; I found non...
Thursday, January 2, 2014

2013 (and prior) -- titles, dates of posts

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Scroll down to find dates and titles (with links) of posts in 2013.  At the bottom are links to posts through 2012 and 2011 -- and all th...
Monday, December 30, 2013

Error Message Haiku

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Found at Komplexify.com , a variety of (often-amusing) mathematical verses -- including a collection of Error Message Haiku .  Approaching a...
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Thursday, December 26, 2013

The angel of numbers . . .

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This poem by Hanns Cibulka (1920 - 2004) -- translated from the German by Ewald Osers -- is collected in the anthology, Strange Attractors...
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Monday, December 23, 2013

Ah, you are a mathematician

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Thanks to Arturo Sangalli of the Writer's Union of Canada -- and fellow-participant in a recent Banff creativity conference --  who re...
Friday, December 20, 2013

Measuring Winter

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Thomas Campion (1567-1620) was an English composer, physician, and poet.   I found this poem at poetryfoundation.org . Now Winter Nights ...
Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Sieve of Eratosthenes

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The Sieve of Eratosthenes      by Robin Chapman He was an ancient Greek looking for primes, those whole numbers divisible only by 1 a...
Saturday, December 14, 2013

Amounting to Something

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From the Fall/Winter 2013 issue of Poet Lore , a poem by David Wagoner about the arithmetic of expectations:      Amounting to Something ...
Wednesday, December 11, 2013

13 lads of Christmas

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     In addition to waterfalls and geysers and the Aurora, Iceland has outstanding museums.  On the morning of December 10, I visited the Na...
Thursday, December 5, 2013

Iceland -- poetry, stones

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British translator and editor David McDuff blogs at " Nordic Voices in Print " -- a site that he uses as "a way of making so...
Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Conversational mathematics

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In recent weeks I have been experimenting with poems that use mathematical terminology, wondering whether -- since there are readers who are...
Saturday, November 30, 2013

Last year's prediction

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This poem by Halifax mathematician and poet, Robert Dawson , appeared in LabLit   in December 2012 (just in time to offer gentle mocking of...
Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Solving equations . . .

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Although poets as long ago as Henry Lok (1553?-1608?), Elizabeth Tollett (1694-1854), and William Blake   (1757-1827) used mathematical ...
Sunday, November 24, 2013

Algebra cadabra

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It was my good fortune to meet Colette Inez back in the early 1990s when she was poet-in-residence at Bucknell University. Then, as now, I ...
Wednesday, November 20, 2013

A poet (math-daughter) speaks of math's beauty

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I met Minnesota poet Roseann Lloyd when we served together on an AWP (Associated Writing Programs) conference panel on translation several ...
Monday, November 18, 2013

Counting responses

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At the Poetry Foundation website , poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992) is described thus:                A self-styled "black, lesbian, mo...
Saturday, November 16, 2013

Inequality of Compromise

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This past week I attended a wonderfully stimulating BIRS (Banff International Research Station) Conference   -- a gathering of creative writ...
Monday, November 11, 2013

The minute in infinity

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From   Treatise on Infinite Series       by Jacob Bernoulli Even as the finite encloses an infinite series       And in the unlimited li...
Thursday, November 7, 2013

Like advanced math?

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One thing leads to another . .. . poet Amy Eisner connected me to mathematician Jordan Ellenberg who knew of Easy Math ( Sarabande Books ...
Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Love mathematics!

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In the stanzas below, I have some fun with math terminology.  Hope you'll enjoy it too.        Love!         by JoAnne Growney      ...
Sunday, November 3, 2013

Neruda speaks of numeration

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The collection, Late and Posthumous Poems, 1968-1974 (Grove Press, 1988) by Chilean Nobelist Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) offers to readers a ...
Thursday, October 31, 2013

On poetry and geometric truth . . .

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          On poetry and geometric truth           And their high privilege of lasting life,           From all internal injury exempt,  ...
Tuesday, October 29, 2013

From order to chaos -- a sonnet

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Fractals    by Diana Der-Hovanessian                               Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare                                ...
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Saturday, October 26, 2013

Two cultures

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The opening poem of Uneasy Relations by mathematician-poet Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is concerned with similarities and differences between...
Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Two-line poems -- Landays -- from Afghanistan

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Celebrate Activist Poetry -- At Nov. 1 Event BE THERE on November 1, 2013 at the Goethe-Intitut in Washington DC when poet and journal...
Monday, October 21, 2013

Topology for poets

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     The title of this posting ("Topology for Poets") comes from Maryland Poet Amy Eisner 's poem "Lure" (offered be...
Friday, October 18, 2013

Mathematics of love . . .

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"Mathematics of Love" is the title poem of a collection by John Edwin Cohen (1941-2012), published in 2011 by Anaphora Literary P...
Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Circle Power

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Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle          by Black Elk (1863-1950)  (translated from Sioux) Everything the P...
Monday, October 14, 2013

"My Proteins"

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The mysteries of science are sometimes explored in poems and, in this vein, I was delighted to find "My Proteins" by Jane Hirshfie...
Friday, October 11, 2013

Mathews retells Dowland (with permutations)

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 In my post for 6 September 2013 I presented Oulipian Harry Mathews ' poem "Multiple Choice" -- a poem whose alternative stor...
Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Split This Rock 2014

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     Plan now to attend the 4th national biennial Split This Rock Poetry Festiva l: Poems of Provocation & Witness in Washington, DC, Ma...
Sunday, October 6, 2013

Measuring the World . . .

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     Yesterday afternoon, at the Goethe Institut in Washington DC , I saw a wonderful film, " Measuring the World ." Based on a po...
Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Sonnet -- To Science

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Edgar Allan Poe's "Sonnet -- To Science" was the "Poem-A-Day" selection of poets.org last week on September 29.  Th...
Monday, September 30, 2013

Splendid Wake project

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On Wednesday, September 25, more than one hundred poets met at the George Washington University Gelman Library's Special Collection Conf...
Thursday, September 26, 2013

Averaging . . . geometry of the center

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Perhaps partly due to his experience as an Air Force pilot during World War II,  Harold Nemerov (1920 - 1991) uses geometry with deft precis...
Monday, September 23, 2013

A poet re-envisions space

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University of Pennsylvania professor Robert Ghrist , in his September 19 lecture ("Putting Topology to Work") at the MAA's Ca...
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Thursday, September 19, 2013

BRIDGES poems, from 17 poets

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Due to the hard work of mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz , poetry has been an important part of recent BRIDGES-Math-Art Conferences . And, unde...
Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Perfect circle, Haiku

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          Perfect circle round                the moon           In the center of the sky by Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), from Book of Ha...
Sunday, September 15, 2013

Consider Pascal

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     Mathematician Blaise Pascal (France, 1623-1662) is known for his explorations with computing machines, for his ideas concerning proba...
Thursday, September 12, 2013

Kaplansky sings Kaplansky (and Pi)

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     I first knew of mathematician Irving Kaplansky (1917-2006) through his monograph, Infinite Abelian Groups -- it was one of my texts f...
Monday, September 9, 2013

Nature poems -- at Stillwater

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     As noted in my 5 August posting , the Stillwater poetry festival (organized by Kevin Clark ) was scheduled for last Saturday, September...
Friday, September 6, 2013

Mathematical structure and Multiple choice

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     A sonnet repeats the iambic rhythm of the heart beat (da-DUM, da-DUM, . . .) with a line length corresponding to a typical breath (5 he...
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Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Poetry-with-math in Baltimore -- 17 Jan 2014

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At the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Baltimore (January 15-18, 2014), the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (under the leadership of edito...
Saturday, August 31, 2013

A square-root of dead weight . . .

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     A poet  I love ( Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013 , 1995 Nobelist ) has died. The NYTimes obituary for Heaney quotes one of my favorites of hi...
Thursday, August 29, 2013

Poetry in a math text

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     In the 1980s, all students at Bloomsburg University were required to take at least one mathematics course and I worked with colleagues...
Monday, August 26, 2013

Celebrating a math-woman

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I am continually searching for poems that feature past and current math-women. When you find one (or create one) I will be glad to have yo...
Thursday, August 22, 2013

Out of 100 -- in the Klondike Gold Rush

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Adding to my recent post on 19 August I note that OEDILF is seeking submissions.     Join the project :  submit limerick definitions of...
Monday, August 19, 2013

OEDILF - the Limerick Dictionary

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     At this site   Editor-in-Chief Chris Strolin is coordinating development of OEDILF : The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form...
Friday, August 16, 2013

Pushkin inspires Seth -- novels in verse

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      My enjoyment of novels in verse began to thrive when a friend and I determined to get into Vikram's Seth's The Golden Gate ( ...
Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Emily Dickinson

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     Although I do not consider any of Emily Dickinson's poems "mathematical," I find that she does not shy from using the te...
Saturday, August 10, 2013

Pushkin poetry, Markov chains

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A Markov chain is a mathematical process that can be used to answer questions such as these:           If the current letter I am reading i...
Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Feynman Point poems

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The Feynman Point is a sequence of six 9s that occurs in the decimal expansion of π -- these 9s are found in positions 762 - 767 following t...
Monday, August 5, 2013

Poetry on Back Roads -- Stillwater Festival

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     On Saturday, September 7, a poetry festival will happen in Stillwater, PA (a small town not far from Bloomsburg where I lived and profe...
Friday, August 2, 2013

Nursery Rhyme Mathematics

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During the last week of July I was in California, vacationing with family (including six of my grandchildren).  Most of these kids have grow...
Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Number personalities

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In his collection,  Zero , Scottish poet Brian McCabe raises questions about numerical classifications.  He begins "The Fifth Season...
Friday, July 26, 2013

Another 17-word Haiku

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If a poet uses only one-syllable words, the resulting Haiku is a bit longer than usual -- as in this Haiku in which the word lengths also fo...
Wednesday, July 24, 2013

A poem with two numbers

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My friend Carol Ann Heckman has studied with Denise Levertov and feeds voraciously on her work.  For many years I have loved Levertov'...
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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Poets at BRIDGES

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These seven poets will be reading math-related poems at the upcoming (July 27-31) BRIDGES Conference in Enschede, the Netherlands ; biograph...
3 comments:
Thursday, July 18, 2013

BRIDGES 2013 -- Math-Art in the Netherlands

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Since 1998, Summer BRIDGES Conferences have been held -- enthusiastic gatherings where theater and visual art and music and poetry and math...
Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Haiku to Mars -- select and vote

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     Each of us may now (July 15 - 29) vote for one of the thousands of Haiku submitted to NASA's "Haiku for Mars" contest. T...
Thursday, July 11, 2013

Counting on numbers

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Alan Michael Parker 's anthologized and highly regarded poem "Family Math" begins in the style of a typical word-problem from...