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 further searching --  for words from this poet  -- led me here.  I offer a sample below -- and invite you, after reading here, to follow the links and explore this fascinating work.
     Here, is one of five poems by Kitasono Katue from Smoke's Straightline (Kemuri no chokusen, 1959), translated into English by John Solt and available at this link.

     Monotonous Space     by Kitasono Katue (1902-1978)

               1
     white square
     within it
     white square
     within it
     black square
     within it
     black square    

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 reread, to write to authors and publishers for permission to present.  There will be future days for me to do that.  Today I offer you a stanza from "Halfway Down" by A. A. Milne (from Now We are Six, E P Dutton, 1927).  Enjoy.

          from Halfway Down     by A. A. Milne (1882-1956)
      
          Halfway down the stairs
          Is a stair
          Where I sit.
          There isn't any
          Other stair
          Quite like
          It.
          I'm not at the bottom,
          I'm not at the top;
          So this is the stair
          Where
          I always
          Stop.                     Here is a link to the rest of this poem -- and to more of Milne's work.

If you would like to see a list of poems that offer"spirit-of-math" insights about math-people and their work, follow this link to find several dozen math-linked titles -- a list originally prepared for a Joint Mathematics Meetings presentation.  Many of the poems on the list are available in this blog and can be located using the SEARCH feature.

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 . . .  at Bridges 2017 he presented a paper that offered samples of artistic designs relevant to his research studies -- geometric structures linked, for example, to ice crystals and the DNA rosette.   Puente also integrates his work with poems and song lyrics.  Both he and I participated in a poetry-reading at the Bridges conference -- he read "Le plus improbable" and he has given me permission to offer you here a portion of "Conga to infinity." 

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 at Beltway Poetry.    Founded by poet Kim Roberts in 2000, this quarterly journal provides a vital voice for poetry in the Washington, DC area.  Thanks, Kim!
     The poem by Roberts below is one that I first met while walking along the street in Takoma Park, MD  -- a community that actively promotes the arts.  Roberts' poem "Six" was displayed for my sidewalk reading in honor of National Poetry Month -- and my photo of that display is shown following the printed text of her poem. Enjoy!

       Six    by Kim Roberts

       The number of feet to dig for a coffin.
       The highest roll of the dice.
       The symbol of Venus, goddess of love.
       The atomic number of carbon.
       As a prefix, either hex or sex.
       A group of French composers in the 1920s.  

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 and found the lovely poem, "How to Build a Stradivarius" by Ilyse Kusnetz (1966 -2016). Here are its closing lines:

       .  .  .
       The truth could be found in the song itself—

       how it was impossible to tell where 
       the wood ceased and the song began—notes pure

       as a mathematical equation. Transposing mountain. 
       Valley. Mountain again.

The complete poem is available here.

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 AND is poetry editor for the online journal, TalkingWriting.  Along with several other mathy poets, Carol participated in the poetry reading at the Bridges 2017 Math-Arts Conference in Waterloo, Ontario.
     Here, playing with mathematical language -- from Carol's 2013 collection, enchantingly illustrated by Terri Saul, Every Evening Deserves a Title (Delirious Nonce, Berkeley, CA) -- is "Euclidean Shivers."

     Euclidean Shivers     by Carol Dorf

     So, how does the Triangle
     relate to the Circle?    

     Euclid and a radius prove points
     that radiate from the center, a circle,
     a method to navigate space.

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 Conference in Waterloo -- a poem by Brazilian poet Marco Lucchesi, a much-honored and widely translated writer who is a professor of literature at the Federal University of Rio Di Janeiro.
 

by Marco Lucchesi

Lucchesi's poem is found in Hinos Matematicos (Mathematical Hymns) -- and has been translated from the Portuguese by Renato Rezende.  The numbers in the poem, 220 and 284, are in mathematics called amicable numbers  -- the proper divisors of each one can be summed to give the other.   For example:   (2 + 110) + (4 + 55) + (5 + 44) + (10+22) + (11+20) + 1 = 284.

Thanks, Marco, for your poem.

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-building  -- along with one of my sons and two of my granddaughters and an array of neighbors -- saw the darkening as about 80% of the sun was covered by the moon.  This event -- the view of the eclipsed sun, the darkened day -- was far more interesting and exciting than I had expected.
     AND, thanks to my neighbor, poet and translator Yvette Neisser, I have been introduced to some poetry about the sun.  She has shared Solar Poems by Homero Aridjis (City Lights, 2010, translated by George McWhirtier).  Here are several stanzas from the opening poem . . .

The Sun’s poem is infinite, 
we can only paint it in words, 
said the painter

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, is Lisa Lajeunesse.  At Capilano University, Lajeunesse teaches a course entitled "Math and Creative Arts" and presented at Bridges a thought-provoking paper entitled "The Golden Ratio:  How Close is Close Enough?"   My close connection with her came because we both were involved in a Bridges 2017 Math-Poetry Reading.  She has given me permission to include her clever and mathy poem here.

  An Equation for Love    by Lisa Lajeunesse     

          They’ve found an equation for love

          It goes something like this
          love equals attraction times compatibility to the power of opportunity
          there’s more of course and there’s been much fiddling
          with coefficients and lesser terms
          involving age, pheromones and duration of eye contact   

The wisdom of grooks . . .

     From Wikpedia, we have this definition:       A grook ("gruk" in Danish) is a form of short aphoristic poem or rhyming aphorism, created by the Danish poet, designer, inventor and scientist Piet Hein (1905-1996), who wrote over 7000 of them, mostly in Danish or English. A couple mathy grooks are offered below -- and, below them, links to more.

        PROBLEMS          by Piet Hein

Problems worthy

of attack

prove their worth

by hitting back.

The grook shown above and more are found here:

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 Catherine.  Authors of the four lines are Judy Green, Shakuntala Devi, Anonymous, and Mike Naylor.

 How many women mathematicians can you name?
How many of you love mathematics?
Women count. Men count. People count.
Counting each and every step along this rocky shore.

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 special events in which I participated was a Sunday afternoon poetry reading; information about the reading (and links) are here in my July 17 posting .  
     Another conference activity -- machine-based and developed by Waterloo computer science grad student Erinn Atwater to work with a data-base of quotations I had gathered that relate to math or poetry -- was a machine set-up to invite conference attendees to compose a four-line Cento from a screen-selection of choices.
     Here is a sample of the Cento poetry that was created; the assembler of these lines listed her name simply as Bianca:

Mathematics is not only connected to art; it is just art.                  (by Solomon Marcus)
There is always a third point between any two.                             (by Michael Rosen)
My imagination is still the same. It’s bad with large numbers.       (by Wislawa Szymborska)
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.                        (by William Shakespeare)

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 of his work The Half-Finished Heaven: Selected Poems (translated by Robert Bly).  Here is the title poem; is it mathematical?

       The Half-Finished Heaven     by Tomas Transtromer

       Cowardice breaks off on its path.
       Anguish breaks off on its path.
       The vulture breaks off in its flight.

       The eager light runs into the open,
       even the ghosts take a drink.  

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.    Below I have created a cento from lines written by the poets who have been invited to participate in the July 30 Poetry Reading at the 2017 Bridges Math-Arts Conference in Waterloo, Ontario.  A wonderful program is planned -- it's not too late to register and join us.

       All is number,      mysterious proportions             
       Like Egyptians      burying gold with the dead       
       Golden Fear                    
       that divides and leaves     no remainder