Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics

Mathematical language can heighten the imagery of a poem; mathematical structure can deepen its effect. Feast here on an international menu of poems made rich by mathematical ingredients . . . . . . . gathered by JoAnne Growney. To receive email notifications of new postings, contact JoAnne at joannegrowney@gmail.com.

Monday, June 26, 2023

TRITINA -- a tiny SESTINA

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     In several previous postings ( collected at this link ) this blog has considered the poetry form called a sestina :     a sestina has 3...
Monday, June 19, 2023

BRIDGES Math-Poetry in Halifax -- July 27-31, 2023

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     BRIDGES, an annual conference that celebrates connections between mathematics and the arts, will be held this year in Halifax Nova Scot...
Wednesday, June 14, 2023

HELLO, Numbers

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     As a child, I learned to love numbers via counting rhymes ( of which many are found at this Lit2Go website );  -- often I reinforced m...
Monday, June 12, 2023

Syllable Squares

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         Poetry and        Mathematics        are languages        that can aid us                   to think                   new thoughts...
Thursday, June 8, 2023

Inventing Zero

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     A Pennsylvania friend who is now in Oklahoma, Sharon Solloway -- whom I got to know when we were both faculty members at Bloomsburg Un...
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Monday, June 5, 2023

Number Patterns in Nature

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     Naval Academy engineering professor and math-poetry fan Gregory Coxson  has recently introduced me to poetry by Mattie Quesenberry Smit...
Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Choosing the GEOMETRIC SHAPE of a poem

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      Structural constraints often govern the patterns we find in poetry -- well-known in poetic history are rhythm-and-rhyme patterns inclu...
Thursday, May 25, 2023

EDGES -- as well as VERTICES -- are IMPORTANT!

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G. H. Hardy (1877-1947) was a prominent English mathematician , well-known to mathematicians for his achievements in analysis and number the...
Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Stimulate Math Class Discussion with Poems

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     Sometimes teachers want to understand more about their students' attitudes and concerns about learning a particular subject.  Often...
Friday, May 19, 2023

Measuring Infinity

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      One of my recent excitements has been to learn about a current exhibit at New York's Guggenheim Museum , " Gego:  Measuring I...
Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Mathematician of the Day

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     On this date, May 16, in the year 1718, the talented  Maria Agnesi was born.  A great source of historical information about mathemati...
Friday, May 12, 2023

Exploring the truth with a FIB

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     Recently I have been reconnected with British-Israeli mathematician-educator, Yossi Elran   (whom I met at a conference in Banff severa...
Monday, May 8, 2023

Celebrate Hypatia

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      Consilience is an online journal   ( edited by Sam Illingworth ) that explores  "the spaces where the sciences and the arts meet...
Thursday, May 4, 2023

Poetry and Mathematics are NOT Opposites

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     Recently I found online -- at the Spectrum Magazine website -- a collection of poems by Florida poet Phillip Whidden .  One of these ...
Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Geometry and Sewing

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     The mathematical ideas that I have mastered over the years spread out and infiltrate whatever I do and experience -- when the newspaper...
Thursday, April 27, 2023

Poets for Science -- Poetry Exhibit

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     In 2017 poet Jane Hirschfeld curated an exhibit entitled "Poets for Science" .  It was featured in Washington, DC on Earth Da...
Monday, April 24, 2023

Where Will the Parallels Meet?

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      One of my favorite poets -- with a varied selection of mathy poems -- is the Czech poet Miroslav Holub (1923-28), an immunologist as ...
Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Once upon a Prime . . .

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      British Mathematician Sarah B. Hart is receiving wide-spread publicity and praise in recent days for the publication of her book Once...
Monday, April 17, 2023

Running . . . Again . . .

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      Today one of my friends from graduate-school days in Oklahoma is running in the Boston Marathon and, while following her progress on m...
Thursday, April 13, 2023

Seeing the World through a dual prism . . .

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     Based in Melbourne, Australia, Tom Petsinis is a mathematics adviser at Deakin University and is author of nine poetry collections a...
Tuesday, April 11, 2023

April -- Mathematics & Statistics Awareness Month

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      Found at the website of the American Statistical Association this fine page of resources for Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Mon...
Thursday, April 6, 2023

Math in Song Lyrics -- Joni Mitchell

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       One of the fun surprises I have had recently is to discover mathematics in the lyrics of a once-popular song -- in "Ray's Da...
Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Mental Math -- and links to Poetic Craft

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     From Yellow Springs News (in Antioch, Ohio), an interesting mathy-poetic story by writer Ed Davis   -- entitled "Emergent Verse |...
Friday, March 31, 2023

Rhymes and Jokes for Mathy Folks

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April 1 is April  Fools Day . April is National Poetry Month . April is National Mathematics & Statistics Awareness Month . CELEBRATE wi...
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Tuesday, March 28, 2023

MATHEMATICS and POETRY -- a balancing act!

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     Recently I came across this article in Good Times -- a weekly newsletter from Santa Cruz County in California -- an article that featu...
Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Antiparticular . . . and so on . . .

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     Writer and St Mary's University (in Halifax) mathematics professor Robert Dawson enjoys composing both poetry and fiction -- and ...
Monday, March 20, 2023

Writing a Proof in Verse -- with ChatGPT3

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     Academician Punya Mishra (from Arizona State) is active in integrating various topics and learning patterns.  Back in 2020, at this li...
Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Poetry found in Scrabblegrams

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      Poetry is often shaped by constraints -- syllable counts, patterns of rhythm and rhyme, and others -- and a writing constraint that ha...
Monday, March 13, 2023

March is Women's History Month

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Learn the history of MATH-WOMEN!      A recently-released poetry collection that I have been excited to acquire is Jessy Randall 's coll...
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Wednesday, March 8, 2023

International Women's Day

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     Today, March 8, is International Women's Day -- a day to pause, recognize, and celebrate the achievements and abilities of women (...
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Monday, March 6, 2023

Celebrate Pi-Day

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  3 . 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3  .  .  .  March 14  -- that is, Pi-Day -- will soon be here.  One of the ways of celebrating    π   is with dessert ...
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Friday, March 3, 2023

FREE MINDS write and share . . .

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     Last weekend I attended a very special event at  Live Garra Theatre in Silver Spring  -- an event featuring poetry and drama from ascen...
Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Is a proof the opposite of a poem?

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      One of the valuable online sources from the MAA (Mathematical Association of America) is the Math Values blog -- found at this link -...
Friday, February 24, 2023

Math-Poetry Word Cloud

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      On this February Friday I became curious once-again about the frequency of various mathy-poetic words used here in my blog -- and I we...
Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Celebrate Black Mathematicians

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     In January, at the National Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston, the National Association of  Mathematicians gave this year's Life...
Friday, February 17, 2023

More Math-Poetry from JHM

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     Every six months a new issue of the open-access online publication, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics , becomes available.  And -- amon...
Monday, February 13, 2023

Happy Valentine's Day

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      A perfect way for math-poetry fans to celebrate Valentine's Day is to visit the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and M...
Friday, February 10, 2023

The Power of Words -- from June Jordan

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      One of the very special privileges that I had while taking classes  at Hunter College (1999-2001) was to attend a poetry reading by Ju...
Monday, February 6, 2023

Remembering Linda Pastan

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     On January 30, the wonderful and versatile poet, Linda Pastan (1932-2023) died.  Here at the Poetry Foundation website is a brief bio o...
Thursday, February 2, 2023

Celebrate Groundhog Day!

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      Since my days as a girl on a farm near the town of Indiana, Pennsylvania -- not far from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania -- I have long be...
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Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Daughters Can Also Be Heroic . . .

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      A recent  online  Cultural Collective  article  featured the Chinese astronomer -- and mathematician and poet --  Wang Zhenyi  (1768-1...
Monday, January 30, 2023

Remembering Charles Simic

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       Recently Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US poet laureate (2007-2008) Charles Simic has died.  Although Simic's poems wer...
Wednesday, January 25, 2023

A mathy poem from artificial intelligence

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     A recent Facebook posting by Maryland poet and computer programmer Henry Crawford  included a poem written by a robot -- and he shared ...
Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Poetry in Politics

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      Numerical or alphabetical constraints often are used by writers to add shape and impact to their writing -- and such was the case in a...
Monday, January 16, 2023

A Lecture on the Cube

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     Summer weeks spent teaching English to Romanian students have helped me to learn of several of the country's fine poets and to get ...
Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Mathematics Sets Sail . . .

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     Each time I open a new issue of Scientific American I am delighted to turn to " Meter" , a poetry feature  begun in 2020 and...
Monday, January 9, 2023

Applied Mathematics -- in Spoken Word Poetry

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     Lots of mathy poems are available on YouTube -- for example, recordings by poetry participants in Bridges Math-Arts conferences are ava...
Friday, January 6, 2023

AMS 2023 Math-Poetry Contest Winners

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     This week, January 4-7, in Boston MA, more than a dozen national mathematics organizations  are holding national meetings -- at a confe...
Monday, January 2, 2023

Celebrate the life of John Sims

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      These days I am celebrating the life -- and mourning the passage -- of mathy-artist-writer and fighter for human rights, John Sims, w...
Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Ending the Year with Gratitude -- for Teachers!

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     During his time as Poet Laureate of the United States, Billy Collins created Poetry 180 -- a project designed to encourage students t...
Wednesday, December 21, 2022

A Cone with a Sphere on top

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      The phrase used as title for this post, "A cone with a sphere on top" -- from a slightly-mathy poem by Katharine O'Brien...
Monday, December 19, 2022

Counting On . . .

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     I was the oldest, the "responsible" one -- when I wanted to sleep in, my mother said, "Your father -- and our farm -- ar...
Thursday, December 15, 2022

Patterns of the Wind

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     Sometimes a poem contains just a sample of mathematics -- but a very memorable one.   Such is the case with "I Like the Wind"...
Monday, December 12, 2022

Short Poems

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          Poetry, like mathematics, uses condensed language -- often saying quite a lot in just a few symbols.           POEM       by Aram ...
Thursday, December 8, 2022

Writing -- a Path toward Knowing

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     Advice for my grandchildren -- in the form of a Fib.  (Wish I had remembered to give it on November 23 -- which is Fibonacci day. )    ...
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JoAnne Growney
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