NOTHING is SOMETHING

Thinking today about ZERO -- zero tolerance, zero fear!

     In recent days, there's been widespread reporting of results of a study done by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concerning the large number of instances of sexual harassment in scientific professions, the most common type being   "degrading jokes and comments that made women feel excluded."
     These findings take me back to the 1980's and "affirmative action" at Pennsylvania's Bloomsburg University (where I was a member of the Mathematics Department).  The University had an Affirmative Action Officer who worked to help faculty and staff develop behaviors and policies that endeavored to end discrimination against women and minorities.  One important test of the appropriateness of an activity was a "symmetry test" -- if a remark or act did not seem proper when the roles of two participants were reversed, then the original was probably something to avoid. In those days, my male colleagues needed to reconsider some of their behaviors and I needed to overcome my fear of speaking up.
      The concept of  zero as "something" that signifies "nothing" is an ever-thought-provoking one.  In support of ZERO TOLERANCE -- with a goal of NOTHING, I offer the following poem, "The Zero," by Israel Har.   

Use MUSIC to enrich STEM teaching

     Last year this blog announced an online conference involving the use of song in teaching STEM subjects.  From one of the organizers, Gregory Crowther, I have this update -- announcing a second annual VOICES conference in September 2018:

       The first all-online VOICES conference 

       featured 40 presentations on teaching STEM subjects with music. 

       Presentation ideas are now being solicited for the 2018 conference

                     to be held on 26 September 2018.   All are welcome to enter!"

     Song lyrics often are poetry; here are links to several lyrics featured earlier in this blog:  "The Derivative Song" by Tom Lehrer,  Lines from "Mandlebrot Set" by Jonathan Coulton,  "Circle Song" and lines from "Hotel Infinity"  by Larry Lesser,  "Questions You Can't Ever Decide" by Bill Calhoun.  

More people are reading poetry!!

     In an email today from Poets.org, I received a link to an article describing increases in the numbers of readers of poetry in recent years (comparing 2017 with 2012).  The article, published by the National Endowment for the Arts, is available here.   Although that article does not mention or credit the STEM to STEAM movement, I'd like to think it may be a factor in enlarging poetry's readership.  

A visual poem

     One of the delights of today's Internet is that it enables us to find friends with common interests all over the world.  An email message from Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke of Nigeria has introduced me to one of his visual poems:
               "Coding Colonisation" is a visual poem written and arranged
               in the computer programming indentation of HTML/CSS. 
               The poem fuses what seem to be mathematics and poetry together . . ."
I have included this poem below; for those who wish background information, some explanation is given in this linked essay.  Please take time to explore the meanings coded here.

_______________    

      /*Coding Colonisation */       by Tope Saludeen-Adegoke

       #menu nativity {
                           africa-america-type:none;
                           margin:0px;
                           background-color:#000000;
       }    

Nature's Examples of Fibonacci Numbers

     Recently I have been reexamining some of the treasures that have been on my bookshelves for a while.  One of these is Discovering Patterns in Mathematics and Poetry by Marcia Birken and Anne C. Coon (Rodopi B. V., 2008).  And, on page 60 of that collection,  I find "Fibonacci Time Lines" by Kansas poet Michael L.Johnson --  the poem is a lovely weave of the Fibonacci numbers with objects they count  (and was originally published in The Unicorn Captured (Cottonwood Review Press, 1980)) and, with the poet's permission, is offered below.

     Fibonacci Time Lines    by Michael Johnson

     cat's
     claw's
     curl, pine
     cone's swirl, goat's
     horn's turn, nautilus'
     shell's homing out, pineapple's whorl,
     sneezewort's branchings, hair's twist, parrot's beak's growth, 
            elephant's
     tusk's curve, monkey's tail's spiral, cochlea's whirl of sound, 
           Vitruvius' analogies, 
     Parthenon's geometry, logarithms' golden sections, time's way 
            through form, mind's acceleration on its helical vector 
            to death . . .

Here is a link to a host of poems linked to the Fibonacci numbers and found in earlier postings in this blog.

A self, divided

     On this very humid summer morning it is a treat to be drawn by Virginia poet Joan Mazza's poem to the chill of a winter morning as the poet divides her energies, measuring her world using fractions.  

Fractions             by Joan Mazza

Half awake at 5 AM, I leave my half of a warm bed
and quilts to the dog, hold the banister to descend
the narrow stairs. The woodstove’s still warm,
only one-tenth the coals aglow under their blanket
of gray ashes. I’ve half a mind to let it be, use electric,
only a quarter more cost than wood. No labor.
Clean heat, with some say one hundredth
the pollution I contribute with my stove.   

Celebrating with a Fib

This
Fib
is to
celebrate
all those people who
connect poetry and math -- CHEERS!

For more about Fibs, do a SEARCH of this blog -- or, for one rich source, go here.

Time comes quantized . . .

     Earlier this month, I saw a poem ("Time/text") by wonderful Canadian poet and friend Alice Major on Facebook and she has given me permission to offer it here.  It is from her first book of poetry, Time Travels Light, (Rowan Books, 1992).

Time/text     by Alice Major

Time comes quantized
in little books     pocked
with fifteen-minute intervals
that mark my progress
through the day —

          Niggling book of kells
      spelling out the duties
  and services
         peculiar to each hour.    

Counting What's Left

     Recently at the 2018 Split This Rock Poetry Festival, I purchased a copy of ghost fishing:  An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology edited by poet Melissa Tuckey (University of Georgia Press, 2018) and, below, I offer a sad poem about "counting" from this anthology.   There is much to value in this fine anthology; follow this link for more information.

As If Hearing Heavy Furniture Moved on the Floor Above Us

                                                 by Jane Hirshfield

As things grow rarer, they enter the ranges of counting.
Remain this many Siberian tigers,
that many African elephants. Three hundred red egrets.
We scrape from the world its tilt and meander of wonder
as if eating the last burned onions and carrots from a cast iron pan.
Closing eyes to taste better the char of ordinary sweetness.

Hirshfield's poem also is found in the Split This Rock Poetry Database along with many other poems of environmental concern and protest.  It was first published in Washington Square Review.   This link connects to work by Jane Hirshfield featured in previous postings for this blog.

Playing with time

        Here is a poem that plays with the geometry of time -- a poem that first appeared in Mathematics Magazine, Vol 68, No 6 (December 1995), page 288.   Several of my other mathy poems written around that same time were collected in a booklet, My Dance is Mathematics, now out of print but available here on my website.  

       Finding Time     by JoAnne Growney

       Points chase points
       around the circle,
       Anti-clockwise,
       fighting time.
       You know time's a circle,
       rather than a line.          

Meeting the horizon line . . .

Poet James Galvin's work is described in this bio as both musical and "profoundly ecological" -- both qualities that strongly draw me to it.  The following poem, "Art Class," plays with math terminology -- drifting back and forth between reality and abstraction -- in a way that is fun to read as well as thoughtful.  Enjoy!

       Art Class  by James Galvin
 
       Let us begin with a simple line,
       Drawn as a child would draw it,
       To indicate the horizon,

       More real than the real horizon,
       Which is less than line,
       Which is visible abstraction, a ratio.   

Counting to 13

     I am a long-time New Yorker subscriber and what a delight it is, occasionally, to open a new issue of the magazine and find that one of their poems has links to mathematics. Such happened for the issue of April 2, 2-18 -- on page 70 of that issue is the poem, "Who Knows One" by Jane Shore.  
     Shore's poem features thirteen stanzas, one for each of the counting numbers 1, 2, 3, ... 13.  The nth stanza has n+2 lines -- except for n=13 -- and that last stanza has n+4 lines.
     Thanks, Jane Shore, for playing with numbers!
     Readers -- here is stanza 4.
       
          Who knows four. I know four.
          What were you doing on all fours?
          Three’s the hearts in a ménage à trois.
          Two’s the jump ropes in double Dutch.
          One is God for God is One—
          One good turn deserves another.

Here is a link to the rest of Shore's poem.

Math gems -- in the imagery of poems

     Much of mathematical terminology is of the flexible sort that can create vivid and interesting images in poetry -- and many poets embed jewels of mathematics here and there in their work.  Whenever I am with a group of poets it almost always turns out that at least one has poems that feature math terms and ideas.  For example, Allyson Lima, a Montgomery College faculty member whom I met at a recent Silver Spring, MD meeting of DC-area translators, shared with me her poem "Turn" -- offered below.  At a recent Takoma Park (MD) Community Center Poetry Reading I met retired attorney Richard Lorr and he has shared with me his poem, "Sweet Crumbs."   At an Arlington, VA reading of prize-winning poems to appear on busses, I met dentist Eric Forsbergh and learned of his poem about DNA-Testing, "Police will Swab Your Cheek."    PLEASE, scroll down, read, Enjoy! 
  

Appreciation of Teachers (this week and FOREVER)

 This is National Teacher Appreciation Week 
 Celebrate your teachers with poems 

This link leads to a poem (previously posted) that celebrates four of my teachers -- Miriam Ayer, Laura Church, T. K. Pan (all math teachers) and Elinor Blair.

Here is a link to a poem by a favorite poetry teacher, Karl Patten.