Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Square poems -- pricked by a cactus!

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     Back home now in Maryland after some time in Arizona (near Tucson) with cousins, my mind is full of the beauty and diversity of the ca...
Wednesday, January 24, 2018

50 years after "The Population Bomb"

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          In 1968 while I was in graduate school at the University of Oklahoma, we all were talking about Paul Erlich 's new book, The P...
Monday, January 22, 2018

A poem that counts

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     Recently I discovered ( at Poets.org ) this thought-provoking number-poem by Oklahoma poet  Quraysh Ali Lansana . bible belted: math ...
Friday, January 19, 2018

Counting syllables and supporting life

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Today, as abortion-protesters march in Washington, I look back to a post from March 25, 2013 and repeat it below.  I, too, cherish life -- ...
Thursday, January 18, 2018

OULIPO, Mathews -- and permutations of proverbs

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     Harry Mathews (1930-2017) was a writer -- novelist, poet, essayist, and translator --whose work interests me a great deal.  He was the...
Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Blog history -- title, links for previous posts . . .

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      My first posting in this blog was nearly eight years ago (on March 23, 2010).  If, at the time, I had anticipated its duration, I s...
Monday, January 15, 2018

Honor Martin Luther King -- think on his words!

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Celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King (1929-1968) with his words-- which include several mathy terms. We must accept  fini...
Thursday, January 11, 2018

Clear the head for best thinking by walking

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     An engineer -- and friend -- who is a long-time supporter of the STEM to STEAM program is US Naval Academy Professor Greg Coxson .  Al...
Monday, January 8, 2018

A Marriage of Music and Mathematics

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     Italian mathematician and musician Rosanna Iembo  is an interdisciplinary star that I have had the pleasure of meeting -- and hearing -...
1 comment:
Friday, January 5, 2018

Mathematics and Gender . . . #MeToo

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FOUND poetry in Peter's Quotations:  Ideas for Our Time ,  compiled by Dr Laurence J Peter (Collins Reference, 1993). A woman has t...
Tuesday, January 2, 2018

In short words . . . a Fib for the New Year!

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       I        want        to wish        you a fine        New Year:  play with words        and time. Count each short word and lin...
Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Problems with no solutions

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     The syllable-square stanza is a poetic form I often turn to when scientific terminology gives me little hope of matching traditional pa...
Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Counting toward Christmas . . .

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     Like my grandchildren, I am counting the days until Christmas -- enjoying holiday lights that break the winter darkness and looking for...
Monday, December 18, 2017

It's time to correct our answers!

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Verses with Two Voices by JoAnne Growney Questions                                                           Answers Why doesn't...
Thursday, December 14, 2017

Visual poetry -- schemes with squares

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Thanks to math teacher  Sara Katz  (at Manhattan's Essex Street Academy)  and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics for today's ...
Monday, December 11, 2017

SPLIT THIS ROCK -- Poetry that takes a stand!

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For a poetry conference about  POETRY THAT MATTERS plan to attend Split This Rock's 2018 (April 19-21) Festival . Information abo...
Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Math-Poetry from YouTube

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     Using "mathematics" as a search term at YouTube.com leads to a huge number of interesting results -- and some of them are po...
2 comments:
Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Calculating Pi -- a poet's view

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     Initially I was drawn to a reading at The Writer's Center in Bethesda a couple of weeks ago because my neighbor, non-fiction write...
Monday, November 27, 2017

Science Poetry from Spain

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     Several weeks ago I got an email from science journalist Elena Soto , from Palma de Mallorca, Spain, director of a weekly science suppl...
Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Burma Shave Mathematics

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     One of the positive aspects of many math journals is that they are not shy about including poems that related to mathematics -- a negat...
2 comments:
Monday, November 20, 2017

What is THE GREATEST EQUATION?

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     Sometimes a poem comes to me with a story -- and such is the case with the poem by Richard Harrison that I offer below.  As part of my ...
Thursday, November 16, 2017

Memorization and formulae

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    A website I enjoy visiting is Ben Orlin's   MathWithBadDrawings.com .  At every mathy website I visit,  it is my habit to do a searc...
Monday, November 13, 2017

Logic and Poetry -- from Lewis Carroll

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     Australian poet Erica Jolly  has alerted me to Lapham's Quarterly  -- a magazine, both print and digital, that offers the view that...
Thursday, November 9, 2017

Stop saying GIRLS can't do MATH

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     Found at Poets.org , this poem by Brenda Cárdenas that, like too many others portrays a girl in a can't do-math situation.  Anothe...
2 comments:
Monday, November 6, 2017

Mathematics -- vital imagery in SO MANY poems . . .

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     Mathematics not only governs the structure of many poems -- of sonnets and pantoums and villanelles and more -- but mathematical imager...
Friday, November 3, 2017

Probability and astonishment

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     A small poem by Lia Purpura in the January 29, 2015 issue of The New Yorker delights even as it highlights the errors that many of us...
Monday, October 30, 2017

Churchill -- Love and Information

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     On a recent Thursday evening at the Forum Theatre in downtown Silver Spring I had the exciting privilege of seeing a splendid staging o...
Friday, October 27, 2017

Moving from STEM to STEAM in Australia

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     "Poets," said Australian writer and teacher Erica Jolly , "find their themes in what matters to them."  This quote ...
Wednesday, October 25, 2017

November 1 deadline for Math Haiku

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     The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics has issued a call for Mathematical Haiku -- follow this link for the guidelines and instructions...
2 comments:
Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The Eyes of Isaac Newton . . . and so on

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     A couple of weeks ago, Irish poet-physicist Iggy McGovern read here in the DC area and introduced readers to his new poetry collection...
Friday, October 20, 2017

Perfectly Matched -- Poetry and Mathematics

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     Mathematician Sarah Glaz has recently published a lovely and varied collection of math-linked poetry -- choosing her title, "Ode ...
1 comment:
Tuesday, October 17, 2017

The best words in the best order . . .

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     Perhaps the way to link this couplet by Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) to mathematics is by referring to the notion of subset .   Wilbur i...
Friday, October 13, 2017

Mathy Double Dactyls

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     The double dactyl is, like the limerick, a fixed verse form -- and one that is often humorous. From Wikipedia's, we have this ini...
Friday, September 29, 2017

Poetry . . . Mathematics . . . and Attitude

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            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

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     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

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     At the website Aleteia.org (a Catholic social networking site that offers information that it deems pertinent to questions about faith...