In my recent use of Google -- in search of mathy poems -- I came across this website: 38 Math Poems for Students in All Grade Levels (a featured page at weareteachers.com). It contains these words:
"Poetry can transforms kids’ attitudes about math exponentially!"
Here's a sample.
And here is a link to more about poet Rebecca Kai Dotlich.
As frequent readers of this blog know, I am indebted to many people for their contributions of poems -- their own and links to others. An alert to today's poem came from Canadian poet Alice Major -- with previous contibutions to this blog found at this link. The poem, "BOUNDARY CONDITIONS" by Sneha Madhavan-Reese was published in the journal Rattle. I offer, below, its opening and closing stanzas, followed by a link to the complete poem.
from BOUNDARY CONDITIONS by Sneha Madhavan-Reese
who but men blame the angels for the wild
exceptionalism of men? —Sam Sax, “Anti-Zionist Abecedarian”
Along the border of any governed region, there exists a value which must
satisfy its laws. This is a rule I learned for solving differential equations.
Poet Nikki Giovanni is someone I much admire -- for her poetry and for her activism -- and recently I had had a chance to see the documentary film "Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project." I valued learning more about Giovanni's life and was reminded to revisit her poetry. In her 1975 collection, The Woman and the Men (of which I have an autographed copy), I re-found her poem "The Way I Feel" and I offer below its mathy final stanza during this 2024 leap year.
from THE WAY I FEEL by Nikki Giovanni
in my mind you're a clock
and i'm the second hand sweeping
around you sixty times an hour
twenty-four hours a day
three-hundred-sixty-five days a year
and an extra day
in leap year
cause that's the way
that's the way
that's the way i feel
about you
from The Women and the Men (William Morrow & Company, New York, 1975)
 |
| From Solo: A Journal of Poetry, 1996. |
In the days and years since my schooling, the numbers of math-women have increased and their public recognition also has increased. But not enough! This list of 18 remarkable women in STEM includes only one math-woman AND. here are several book-seller links to explore:
Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World
30 Remarkable Women in Science and Math
The First Woman in Space: Valentina Tereshkova
20 Greatest Mathematicians: Masters of Mathematics from the Past, Present, Future
A very important math-influence in my life was my high school math teacher for my junior and senior years, Laura Church. Today, exploring the internet, searching for her name, I found only this memorial statement and, although it tells of her teaching at Indiana Joint High School, it does not mention that her teaching-subject was math. Here is a stanza that celebrates her:
One of my recent finds has been an article that offers a list of 20 films about math, mathematicians, and math-geniuses. Eagerly, I opened the article to read about the films and to see which of them also involved poetry. ALAS, I did not find that these math-people connected with poetry. Following that non-find, I turned to a favorite source of mathy poems to discover something to post.
That favorite source is Against Infinity, edited by Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp (Primary Press, 1979 and now out of print); this collection has been on my shelf for many years and is the first math-poetry anthology that I ever encountered. Here is a poem from that collection, written by a Missouri high school senior, Carol Clark.
During January 4-7, 2024, mathematics meetings were held in San Francisco, CA. Although unable to attend, I have spent some time browsing abstracts of the presentations there and found several that involve poetry. Suzanne Sumner of the University of Mary Washington, gave a presentation entitled "How Poetry Informs the History of Mathematics" and here is a link to the abstract for Sumner's presenation.
From Sumner's abstract I learn that the ancient Sanskrit scholar Acharya Pingala was likely to have been the first to use Fibonacci numbers and Pascal's triangle in his poetry. Using this blog's SEARCH feature, I found this link to prior mentions of Fibonacci in this blog and this link to mentions of Pascal.
Recently my thoughts have turned often to these mathy-poetic words by Danish-American comedian-musician Victor Borge (1909-2000):
Laughter is the
shortest distance
between two people.
* * * *
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
This quote from science fiction writer Isaac Asimov is found here along with other related views. For me also -- with poetry or math or some other subject -- writing is an important thinking strategy: my fingers with my pen lead me to new ideas. And counting syllables shapes my words like this:
I
start with
just a few
words -- and write them --
AND my fingers help
to develop my thoughts.
One of the wonderful supporters of connections between mathematics and the arts has been BRIDGES, a conference-gathering that was initiated by Reza Sarhanghi (1952-2016) in 1998.
Here, at the BRIDGES website, one may find information about the upcoming 2024 conference. This website also offers -- via the link Papers Archive -- access to conference papers from 1998 to 2023.
Poetry became part of the conference in 2011 and, at the link Mathematical Poetry, we are taken to a website maintained by math-poet Sarah Glaz -- a website that offers access to a vast and wonderful collection of poems, anthologies, recordings, videos, . . .
Below I include an anthology sample, a very fine poem by Deanna Nikaido from the Bridges Stockholm 2018 Anthology.
Ratio by Deanna Nikaido
They say there are two sides to everything.
STUDENTS – Middle School, High School, College
Write a Mathy POEM
OR
Interview a Math-Woman, write an ESSAY about her
Entries are being accepted now – and up to FEBRUARY 1, 2024.
Information about the MATH-POETRY competition is available here.
Information about the MATH-WOMAN ESSAY CONTEST is available here.
As the year ends, remembering an important truth . . .
The true spirit of delight, the exultation,
the sense of being more than man,
which is the touchstone of the highest excellence,
is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.
Bertrand Russell (1972-1970)
As I enjoy the brightness that Christmas tree lights bring to a grey day, I am reminded of the following poem by Brian Bilston, found on Twitter (X) early in December:
Previous mentions of Brian Bilston in this blog may be found at this link.
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