Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Long division is difficult . . .

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Last Monday included a visit with old friends of whom I see too little, Silver Spring artist Mark Behme -- with whom I did some art-poetry ...
Sunday, February 23, 2014

Angles in Alaska

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Last Thursday evening I was honored to read in Takoma Park's Third Thursday poetry series -- along with poets Judy Neri and Kathleen O...
Thursday, February 20, 2014

Excitement of Proving a Theorem

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Wow!  From first sighting, I have loved this description:        I prove a theorem and the house expands:        the windows jerk free to...
Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Wartime recurrence

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In mathematics, it is not unusual to define an entity using a recurrence relation.  For example, in defining powers of a positive integer: ...
Thursday, February 13, 2014

Mother Courage -- and speaking of opposites

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     Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was a poet , but I have not found mathematics in his poems.  Still, I want to note here a fantastic perform...
Monday, February 10, 2014

To love, in perfect syllables

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     While looking for Valentine verse with a math connection, I opened my copy of The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll (Chancel...
Friday, February 7, 2014

Love and Mathematics -- Please be my Valentine!

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Poet extraordinaire Maxine Kumin (1925-2014) died yesterday.   Here is a link to a wonderful eleven of her poems from Persimmon Tree . ...
Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Six Million

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       Sometimes numbers become labels for particular events.  When I was growing up, all of us knew 1492 as a label for the discovery of A...
Sunday, February 2, 2014

Forecasting snow and poetry

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Snowbound is that other world in which no schedules sit and no ambitions flare to interrupt the bluest sky and whitest field and coldest ...
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...