Remembering Solomon Marcus

     Almost five years ago I received an email from Romanian mathematician Solomon Marcus in response to my posting of a translation of  a poem by Nichita Stanescu (1933-1983) entitled "Poetic Mathematics"  -- a poem that Stanescu dedicates to Marcus.  In his email, Marcus offers this:

          Nichita Stanescu published his "Poetic Mathematics" in January 1971, in the magazine ARGES, as a reply to my book "Mathematical Poetics" (in Romanian, 1970; in German in 1973, at Athenaeum Verlag, Frankfurt/Main).

Here is a link to an interview with Marcus last year (at age 90) and it tells of his ongoing literary interests.  Recently I learned the sad news of his death, last month at the age of 91.  Some interesting details of the way Marcus and Stanescu experimented with the uses of language are included in this 2008 article by Emilia Parpala and Rimona Afanaa and are illustrated in the following poem, "Ritual," in which Stanescu uses numbers to explore and extend the meaning of The Last Supper.

     Ritual     by Nichita Stanescu  (trans. Sean Cotter)

     I cry before the number five --
     the last supper, minus six.

From a math-friend and an Ohio poet

     One of the wonderful things about writing a blog about my paired passions of poetry and mathematics is that the blog connects me with fascinating and generous people whom I might not otherwise meet. One of these is Marylander Greg Coxson -- physicist, engineer, mathematician, Operations Researcher -- who took three years of Latin in high school and loves words.  With interests in art and poetry, Greg has organized exhibits of math-related art -- and is a regular recommender of mathy poems for this blog.
     A week or so ago Greg alerted me to an NPR interview with Ohio Poet Laureate Amit Majmudar (a radiologist as well as a poet) -- letting me know that Majmudar's poetry was rich with mathematical imagery.  Following Greg's lead, I found Majmudar's website and was able to contact both Majmudar and his publisher, Knopf, for permission to offer these mathematical poems.
     Here, from Amit Majmudar's new book Dothead, are two sections of the poem "Logomachia" -- sections alive with geometry and logic.  The first, "radiology," is visually vivid; the second, "the waltz of descartes and mohammed," is a sestina that plays with the logic of word-order.  

"The Giraffe" -- a poem for my pocket

     I've found the poem I want to carry in my pocket (and in my head) on "Poem in Your Pocket Day" -- coming soon on April 21. It includes at least one number; here it is:

       The Giraffe     by Ron Padgett

       The 2 f's
       in giraffe
       are like
       2 giraffes
       running through
       the word giraffe

       The 2 f's
       run through giraffe
       like 2 giraffes.    

A Diagonal . . . and so little time . . .

On my mind in recent days is the problem of "so little time."  About a year ago I posted a wonderful mathy poem by Californian Brenda Hillman about time.  The complete poem is available here; below I supply the opening lines:

       Time Problem     by Brenda Hillman

               The problem
                of time.      Of there not being 
                enough of it. ...

Over the six years of this blog, the most-visited post has been "Varieties of Triangles"  with poetry by Guillevic.  Here is another of that poet's charming geometric offerings:

 Diagonal   by Guillevic  (Englished by Richard Sieburth)

       To get where I have to go
       I claim right of way.

       Because I provide communication
       Between two angles

       I take precedence
       I take up residence.

       I cross first,
       Come what may.
 
"Diagonal" is found in Guillevic's Geometries,from Ugly Duckling Presse (2010). Buy it!

"The Computation"

     Here is a favorite poem of mine -- and it available with many others in the anthology, Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me.

     The Computation     by John Donne (1572-1631)

     For the first twenty years, since yesterday,
     I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away,
     For forty more, I fed on favours past,
         And forty on hopes, that thou wouldst, they might last.
     Tears drowned one hundred, and sighs blew out two,
         A thousand, I did neither think, nor do,
         Or not divide, all being one thought of you;
         Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
     Yet call not this long life; but think that I
     Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?

How clever of Donne, writing all those years ago, to speak (indirectly, at least) to 2016's Math Awareness Month theme, "The Future of Prediction."

The Future of Prediction

     As well as being National Poetry Month, April is Mathematics Awareness Month and this year's theme is "The Future of Prediction."  In search of a poem on the theme, I found the following sonnet by poet Joyce Nower -- third in a section of 20 sonnets, "Meditations of Hypatia of Alexandria," in her collection, The Sister Chronicles and Other Poems (IUniverse, 2012), available in both print and electronic versions.

3.  Scales Can't Calculate*     by Joyce Nower

       Hypatia, Math, God One, can't plot the locus
       of soul and star, predict exactly where
       and when you die, whose hand deals death.  No hocus

Contemplating the heavens

English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a poet but was better known for his pithy sayings.   For example, we have the following statement (originally found here). 

         The
         difference
         between the poet
         and the mathematician
         is that the poet tries to get
         his head into the heavens
         while the mathematician
         tries to get the heavens
         into his head.

     Alas, Chesterton's comment obeys the common assumption that the male pronoun should be used for mathematicians.  Another poetic comment on mathematicians is found in a poem by Anthony Hecht -- "Mathematics Considered As a Vice" -- available here at PoetryFoundation.org.  Hecht's poem  offers a strongly negative view of the abstract nature of mathematics.
     Rivalry between mathematics and poetry comes to a head in April -- during which we will celebrate both "National Mathematics Awareness Month" and "National Poetry Month."

The Shape of the World -- a dream of equality

     One of the most vital components of the Washington DC poetry scene is Split This Rock -- an  organization that speaks and acts against injustice.  (Co-founder and Executive Director, Sarah Browning, is a long-time activist and a fine poet.)  One of STR's 2016 programs has been Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016,  a book arts and cultural festival that commemorates the 2007 bombing of Baghdad’s historic bookselling street, and emphasizes free exchange of ideas and knowledge, in solidarity with the people of Iraq.  Several weeks ago at one of these events I met poet Dunya Mikhail and her translator, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, and was involved in discussion and reading from The Iraqi Nights (New Directions, 2015).  Here is a mathy poem from that collection.

       The Shape of the World      by Dunya Mikhail
                                           translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid)
       If the world were flat
       like a flying carpet,
       our sorrow would have a beginning
       and an end.

       If the world were square,
       we'd lie low in a corner
       whenever the war
       plays hide and seek.

       If the world were round,
       our dreams would take turns
       on the Ferris wheel,
       and we'd all be equal.

     A link to the Arabic original version of this poem is shown at the bottom of Mikhail's webpage -- a link that also offers  a recording of her reading this poem, set to music.
     And please note that coming up soon is the  2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival (April 14-17, 2016) with many excellent workshops and readings.  Learn about it here and register (online registration closes March 31).  See you there.

World Poetry Day -- Celebrate favorites!

     Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
     Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; 

     Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

     I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

                      From "Dirge without Music" by Edna St Vincent Millay; offered by Hermann Weyl

                      in a Memorial Address for Amalie "Emmy" Noether on April 26, 1935 at Bryn Mawr College.

Poems that Count

On January 6 of this year I attended a wonderful poetry reading (sponsored by The Word Works) that featured the work of poets Tera Ragan and James Ragan (Tera's father). Their poetry is rich in imagery of their birthplaces -- near Pittsburgh -- and Czechoslovakia (where James' parents were born and a place they visited often).  Please enjoy these lovely and varied poems that include a few well-chosen numbers:   "Alcove" by Tera Vale Ragan; "Beckett Had Only One Student" and "The Eskimo's Twelve Expressions of White" by James Ragan.
                                                               
       Alcove     by Tera Vale Ragan

       Brick upon stone, a growing
                                        foundation,
       he builds a new family home up
       from the ground
                                        cement and marble
       tile to ceiling
       beam and red oak
                                        he paid for with cash.

A poem is an equation?

     Exiled Romanian poet Nina Cassian (1924-2014) spoke with a daring and imaginative voice that I have much admired.  And she occasionally used mathematical imagery in her work -- as in the following poem:

Controversy   by Nina Cassian
                                          (translated from Romanian by William Jay Smith)
I wrote a poem, an oblique poem,
a kind of calligram, I mean.
Someone said it was an equation
being solved behind a screen. 

Celebrate Math Women

     March is Women's History Month and, although this year's theme focuses on women in public service and government, my own thoughts tend toward women in mathematics.  My post on July 21, 2015 focuses on math women -- and a google search of the blog using "math women" will lead to a host of additional poems and links.  Enjoy!
     To celebrate math-women one must first be able to name them; here is a link to an important and relevant article by Judy Green, "How Many Women Mathematicians Can You Name?"

I am the girl voice,

Drafts scribed--thoughts stretched, smoothed, squared, sighed --

Catch here now my I.

    

Inspired by Pi

     Last year, a few days after Pi-Day, my email had a link (Thanks, Paul Geiger!) to an example of Pilish -- this one a circle poem by Mike Keith that represents the initial 402 digits of Pi  -- and I have, at last, posted the poem below.  Keith's poem first appeared in the The Mathematical Intelligencer in 1986. 

     And here is a link to musical Pi --at the webpage of "The Derivatives" are math parodies written and performed by Bloomsburg University professors William Calhoun, Kevin Ferland, and Erik Wynters, including The Pi  Song (also known as 3.14159/Circle).

Arnold diffusion (and poets of Romania)

     I have had the good fortune to attend two BIRS Math / Creative Writing workshops in Banff (most recently in January 2016) and one of the organizers of these workshops has been Florin Diacu, a Romanian-Canadian mathematician-poet at Canada's University of Victoria. (For a bit more about my interest in Romanian poets, you may visit this posting from 2012 ; for still more, use "Romania" as a blog-search term.)
     Recently I discovered the following poem by Florin in the January 2014 issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics and that online journal's open-access policy permits me to offer it here.  I have wondered whether it is prudent of me to present a poem about Arnold diffusion, a topic about which I have scant mathematical background.  But I like it, even though my understanding is incomplete; I hope you like it too.