Shifting patterns

This poem by California poet and scientist Lucille Lang Day weaves a shifting display of images -- the flight patterns of birds made vivid with mathematical terminology. As the poet's observations meander, they build to a question: is a galaxy something like a sparrow?

     Form/Formless      by Lucille Lang Day

     A flock of red-winged blackbirds 
     swooping and swirling 
     in cyclonic and anticyclonic patterns 

     always in motion like Jovian clouds 
     that appear, then disappear 
     according to the mathematics of chaos 
     in yellow, brown and salmon-colored layers 

Mathematics and Mexican Food

Recently Rattle posted a wonderful mathy poem by Diana Rosen entitled "Mathematics and Molé." Here's the first stanza:

     Mathematics and Molé     by Diana Rosen

     Numbers flicker in front of my eyes as
     I give him my full attention.
     Differential geometry explains the black hole, he says.
     It’s very obvious.
     I lean forward to catch his words,
     my chin in cupped hand,
     eyes intent on his, yet
     thinking of Mexican food.

     Mathematics is the language of science, he says.
        . . .

Rosen's complete poem is here.

The Icosasphere

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) has fun with the sounds of words -- including a number of math terms -- in her playful poem that celebrates inventive constructions from bird nests to a steel sphere-like icosahedron to the Pyramids of Egypt. 

The Icosasphere       by Marianne Moore

“In Buckinghamshire hedgerows  
     the birds nesting in the merged green density,  
          weave little bits of string and moths and feathers and
                                                                                    thistledown,  
              in parabolic concentric curves" and,  
     working for concavity, leave spherical feats of rare efficiency; 
          whereas through lack of integration,  

Sustainability and Collapse

     Last Tuesday evening mathematician Charles Hadlock offered an excellent lecture -- "Sustainability and Collapse" --  at the MAA Carriage House.  Hadlock's presentation offered examples and arguments from his recently published book, Six Sources of Collapse (MAA, 2012).  This must-read book describes investigation into common dynamics of disaster processes from the extinction of the passenger pigeon to the Chernobyl accident to extreme weather and . . .
     My lingering thoughts about Hadlock's engaging lecture led me to look for poems related to sustainability and collapse.  From my bookshelf I pulled Making Certain It Goes On:  The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo (Norton, 1984) and found this poem of collapse and counting:

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg      by Richard Hugo (1923 - 1982) 

Four -- square, colors, theorem, poem

During my doctoral study days at the University of Oklahoma I knew several mathematicians who were working on graph theory problems -- and a couple of them worked on problems related to the Four Color Conjecture -- a conjecture (dating back to around 1850) that became a theorem in 1976 with a proof by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken verifying (using many hours of computer time).  It asserts that four colors are sufficient to color any plane map so that no pair of adjacent regions have the same color.  This theorem has been again on my mind since reading the obituary of Kenneth Appel, who died on April 19.
Here is a link to an earlier posting (5 November 2011) on the Four Color Problem with a poem by Frank Bernhart.  And here, repeated from that post, is my poetic version of the Four Color Theorem:

        F O U R
        F O U R
        F O U R
        F O U R

Enough for everyone -- Russell Libby

Are you looking for a poem on a particular math topic?  One search strategy is to go to the Poetry Foundation website (another is to click on the green SEARCH BOX in the right column of this blog) and enter your math term into the search box; if, for example, you enter "geometry" one of the poems you find will be this one by Russell Libby (1956  -2012).  Both poet and organic farmer, Libby believed in sustainability:  all it takes is one well-cared-for seed to grow and spread.  Here is his "Applied Geometry." 

     Applied Geometry     by Russell Libby

     Applied geometry,   

     measuring the height   

     of a pine from   

     like triangles,   

Growing lines . . .

 Maximizing Meaning (maybe)

How
many
syllables
will fit on this
single line segment?
_____________________________________________________

Zero Power

To neutralize the differing effects of any non-zero numbers -- to wipe out vast differences between numbers -- we may raise each of them to the power zero.*  When 0 is applied as the exponent for any nonzero number, the result is 1.  So 7⁰ = 1 and 5378 ⁰ = 1 and (.001)⁰ = 1.   And here are "zero power" and other mathematical concepts interpreted in a poem.

     N to the Zero Power     by Laurie Clemens

     He holds one photograph
     featuring one man and one woman.

     Three birds perch on two wires
     forming an isosceles triangle over the last
     red brick street in town.

Geometry of a hawk's flight

One of the poets featured in the current Poetic Likeness Exhibit -- featuring photographs and paintings and sculptures of poets along with a few favorite lines -- at the National Portrait Gallery is Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989).   Although I hugely admire Warren's novel, All the King's Men, I am not very familiar with Warren as a poet.  The gallery posted, beside Warren's photo, a few lines about a hawk.  And I went searching online to find more.  The exhibit's quote was from Warren's "Mortal Limit" but my search led first to "Evening Hawk" -- with a first stanza bright with geometry;  I offer that stanza here.

Earth Day, 2013

     OUR earth is finite. 
     Its resources are
     finite. No clever
     transformation can

     convert the
     finite to
     infinite.

     We must
     learn to

     share.  

And, here is a link to a previous Earth Day posting.