Friday, September 29, 2017

Poetry . . . Mathematics . . . and Attitude

›
            Outwitted      by Edwin Markham (1852-1940)             HE DREW a circle that shut me out—             Heretic, rebel, a thi...
Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Alice's Adventures in Numberland

›
     Recently I was alerted to some postings by Alice Silverberg -- she is a professor of mathematics and computer science at the Universit...
Monday, September 25, 2017

Chinese Poem of the Cross

›
     At the website Aleteia.org (a Catholic social networking site that offers information that it deems pertinent to questions about faith...
Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Women Count

›
     Today's commentary by Washington Post writer Dana Milbank offered a forceful reminder that women are often talked-over by men.   M...
Monday, September 18, 2017

Irish poet McGovern to visit US

›
     Irish poet and physicist Iggy McGovern will visit the US in October and is scheduled to read at  The Writer's Center in Bethesd...
Friday, September 15, 2017

Love Triangle . . ..

›
      One day, looking online for Edwin Abbott's 19th century classic, Flatland , I found not only Abbott's tale but some poetry.  A...
Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Truth in a circle . . .

›
     In these days when the truth-value of so much of what I hear broadcast is difficult to assess I have been drawn back to a poem by Emily...
Monday, September 11, 2017

Poetry of Colors and Geometry

›
      Recently I found online links to an exhibit by Japanese Surrealist Poet Kitasono Katue at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and f...
Thursday, September 7, 2017

Halfway down . . .

›
     This week I have been sifting through piles of poems I have collected for possible posting herein.  Poems which I need to read and rere...
Tuesday, September 5, 2017

From Hydrology to Poetry to Infinity . . .

›
     Carlos Puente is a professor of hydrology at the University of California, Davis AND he is so much more . . .  a...
Friday, September 1, 2017

Celebrate Kim Roberts with "Six"

›
     Today is the first of a new month and, as expected, this morning I got an email reminder of the monthly Poetry News that is available ...
Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Pure as a mathematical equation

›
     I am pleased when I see mathematics held up as an ideal -- and such was the case when I opened my June 19, 2017 issue of The New Yorker...
Monday, August 28, 2017

How does the Triangle relate to the Circle?

›
     One of the active promoters of poetry with links to mathematics is Californian Carol Dorf -- who teaches math at Berkeley High School A...
Tuesday, August 22, 2017

More solar numbers

›
     Yesterday's eclipse is still on my mind -- and "solar" links me to a poem featured at the recent Bridges Math-Arts Confe...
Monday, August 21, 2017

The Sun's poem is infinite . . .

›
      On this day during which many in the US experienced the totality of a solar eclipse, I stayed in Maryland and, on the roof of my condo...
Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Seeking an EQUATION for LOVE . . .

›
       One of the interesting and fun people I had the good fortune to meet at the 2017 Bridges Math-Arts Conference in Waterloo, Ontario, ...
8 comments:
Monday, August 14, 2017

The wisdom of grooks . . .

›
     From Wikpedia , we have this definition:       A grook ("gruk" in Danish) is a form of short aphoristic poem or rhyming aph...
Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Counting, women, loving mathematics

›
     Here is another Cento from BRIDGES -- for background information, please see my August 4 posting -- this one composed by Erinn and Cat...
Friday, August 4, 2017

Centos from 2017 Bridges Math-Arts Conference

›
     Last Monday evening I returned home from the 2017 Bridges Math-and-the-Arts Conference at the University of Waterloo.  One of the spec...
2 comments:
Tuesday, July 25, 2017

from "The Half-Finished Heaven"

›
     In 2011, Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer (1931-2015) won the Nobel Prize and this year Graywolf Press has issued a wonderful collection...
Monday, July 17, 2017

A CENTO from BRIDGES 2017 Poets

›
     A cento is a literary work made from quotations from other works -- most often it is a poem, assembled from lines by other poets.    Be...
2 comments:
Sunday, July 16, 2017

Too soon -- Maryam Mirzakhani taken by cancer

›
     The brilliant and celebrated mathematician -- and 2014 Fields Medal Winner -- Maryam Mirzakhani has, on July 14 at age 40, died after ...
Wednesday, July 12, 2017

They Say She Was Good -- for a Woman

›
      Regulars to this blog know of my appreciation and support for the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics -- an online journal that publish...
Sunday, July 9, 2017

Three Odd Words

›
     I love the mental jolt I get when a math word is used with a non-math meaning -- suddenly some playful back-and-forth happens in my hea...
Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Finding poems in Maria Mitchell's words

›
SO MANY words and phrases are poetic that are NOT YET called poems. A recent Facebook posting for the Max Planck Society featured th...
Thursday, June 29, 2017

The NUMBERS that help us REMEMBER . . .

›
     Born in Lithuania, poet Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) became fluent in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, English and French.  He emigrated to ...
Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Chains of Reasoning

›
     In a recent conversation about mathematics, one of us said, "Mathematics is not about what is true, or cannot be, but is a collect...
Thursday, June 22, 2017

Euclid's Iron Hand

›
      Alice Major is a Canadian poet who admits to having loved mathematics since girlhood and who often includes mathematical ideas and im...
Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Three Plus Four Divided by Seven

›
     A good friend, Doru Radu -- with whom I have partnered to translate some Romanian poetry into English -- shares with me a love for the ...
Friday, June 16, 2017

Fondness for numbers . . .

›
     Today I am looking back to a posting on 23 April 2011 that includes the first stanza of one of my favorite mathy poems; here is a copy...
Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Equation after equation, smiling . . .

›
       Today's news offers the exciting announcement that Tracy K. Smith is the new Poet Laureate of the United States.  I have not fo...
Monday, June 12, 2017

Finding the Normal Curve

›
     A poem I have much admired since I first saw it (January, 2016) in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics is "Pension Building, Wa...
Thursday, June 8, 2017

The treasures of memory . . .

›
                  The Days of the Month      Thirty days hath September,      April, June, and November;      February has twenty-eight ...
Monday, June 5, 2017

Celebrate mathematics -- and the other liberal arts!

›
     Before it became linked to science and engineering and computing, mathematics was one of the liberal arts.  And, in my view, it should ...
Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Kandinsky's geometry inspires poetry . . .

›
     Found at the vast and varied international poetry site,  Poetry International Web , a mathy poem by Australian poet Katherine Gallagher...
Thursday, May 25, 2017

A poem with 90 lines, 269 words . . .

›
     A poet whose work I enjoy is  Charles Bernstein   (editor at the electronic poetry center ,  a vast and wonderful site to visit and bro...
Monday, May 22, 2017

My Math Teacher

›
     The 2016-2017 school year is drawing to a close.  Some are loving their math teachers and some are celebrating them with poetry.  Here ...
1 comment:
Thursday, May 18, 2017

"Mathematics" & "Poetry" in the same sentence!

›
Thanks to Google for helping me find things -- for example, this quote from Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun  :      Poetry is a form of ...
2 comments:
Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Solve for X . . . and understand . . .

›
     In this morning's email, today's Poem-a-Day  from poets.org  has the mathy title, " Solve for X ." Written by Oliver ...
Monday, May 15, 2017

Links to poems and songs with STEM themes

›
     During April 2017, Indiana State Poet Laureate Shari Wagner teamed with Indiana Humanities to feature the work of Hoosier poets to cel...
Thursday, May 11, 2017

Using SONGS to teach STEM -- online conference

›
     A recent email from Greg Crowther has let me know of an upcoming conference that looks to be LOTS OF FUN -- an interdisciplinary vir...
2 comments:
Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Save the Climate, change STEM to STEAM

›
     Australian poet Erica Jolly is one of the leaders of the STEM to STEAM movement in Australia -- she has introduced me to The Conversati...
Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Speaking out for Immigrants, McNish

›
        British spoken-word poet Hollie McNish has shouted out in verse in support of  immigration .  Her poem, from which I include some li...
Friday, April 28, 2017

March for Climate -- again!

›
        The lines below are copied from a posting made on September 20, 2014 -- posted as I finalized plans to travel to New York City for a...
Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Math-Arts Journal -- Free Access

›
     Sometimes an email contains a wonderful gift -- such was the case recently when I got a message from the Journal of Mathematics and the...
Monday, April 24, 2017

Poetry and Science -- Allies in Discovery

›
     Poet Jane Hirshfield read onstage as part of the March for Science in Washington, DC on Saturday April 22.   Science and poetry both a...
Thursday, April 20, 2017

Remembering Karl Patten

›
     From my Lewisburg, PA friend, Ruta Karelis, I have recently learned of the April 16  death of my beloved first poetry teacher, Bucknell...
1 comment:
Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Poetry by Victorian Scientists

›
     Thanks to Greg Coxson who has recently alerted me to this 2011 article by Paul Collins in New Scientist , "Rhyme and reason: The V...
Friday, April 14, 2017

A Fib for Easter

›
     Recently a reader commented privately to me that she did not like the Fib as a poem-style since it seems to allow almost any prose stat...