Using the Golden Ratio to Construct Poems

     Poetic constraints such as syllable-counts and rhymes may seem at first glance to pose difficulties in constructing a poem BUT those of us who have explored using constraints very often find that meeting the imposed constraints guides us to new and creative thinking.  At the July, 2025 Bridges Conference, Sarah Glaz and Lisa Lajeunesse offered a workshop that explored writing strategies derived from this ratio.  (Here is a link to the abstract for the workshop -- and at that link you also can download a pdf of the complete paper.)  Below I offer a couple of samples of their "golden ratio" poems.

Learning by Writing

The above statement comes from a blog posting by Denise Gaskins -- in her blog, Let's Play Math, at this link.  Here's more from that post:

Journaling Prompt 20: Math Poetry: The Square

More of Humanistic Mathematics

     Last week I mentioned the current (July, 2025) issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics and today I want to again call attention to the array of poetry that is in this issue; here is a ink to the Table of Contents and the photo below offers a list of poetry titles and authors.  (Visit the JHM website; explore and enjoy; several delightful stanzas from Vijay Fafat and Cristian Ramirez Rodriguez  were offered in this previous blog post.)

In a 2023 issue, in the JHM Section entitled The World of Mathematics, two of the eight articles involve poetry -- the 2nd and third articles named below; to get to the Table of Contents and access to the articles, follow this link.

Celebrating Poetry at 2025 BRIDGES Conference

     A lavish and wonderful celebration of connections between mathematics and the arts is the annual international BRIDGES, Mathematics and the Arts Conference.  This year's conference took place last month (July, 2025 in Eindhoven, Netherlands) and one of its special events was a poetry reading.  

     Information about the poets and sample poems are available here at the website of Sarah Glaz (mathematician-poet and coordinator of the BRIDGES readings).  Below I have included one of these very special poems:

View no Fiery Night        by Marian Christie 

No
one
went to   
the tower
to vie with the foe.
Fretting, worn, we rove in night fog ––
the ring, the theft, the vow forgotten. Hovering high
over the town, the frightening wyvern, whirr of her winging interwoven with fire.

Poetry in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

      Twice a year a new issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics is published online; here is a link to the Table of Contests for the July, 2025 issue which I have recently enjoyed browsing.   This issue contains a plentiful variety of poems and articles related to poetry.  The term "Linear Poem" was a concept new to me -- found here in the article, "Introducing the Linear Poem" by Cristian Ramirez Rodriguez -- and I offer it below:

     Linear Poems
     Are poems where each line
     increases or deceases by the same number of 
     words every single line, this number is the slope, m, and
     the words in title are b (intercept); Here m is 3, b is 2.

The author goes on to tell how he has used this form with math students -- and he offers additional examples.

Rhymes Help Us Remember

     In a few days I will be going on a vacation with family -- enjoying time with my children and grandchildren.  As I think back to past times together, I remember querying my grandkids about their math interests and suggesting the invention of a mathy rhyme.  I find rhyming statements easier to remember than non-rhyming ones -- and my grandchildren enjoyed discovering and inventing and repeating rhymes -- sometimes brilliant and sometimes silly.

     One of my longest-known and all-time favorite mathy rhymes is this one that tells the days of the month; below is a version of this memory-aid, found online here at Math is Fun.  

Mathematics and Golf

      Poet and science-writer Sam Illingworth has been noted in earlier posts in this blog -- here's a link -- and I enjoy online-searching for his work again and again to find still more.   Illingworth's blog, The Poetry of Science, is a wonderful site to visit and revisit, to read and explore.  

    Recently I discovered the following Illingworth poem  (posted at The Poetry of Science on June 19, 2025) -- a poem with a bit of math AND inspired by recent research findings that living near a golf course increases the risk of Parkinson's disease (possibly due to exposure to pesticides used on the course).

          Overspill      by Sam Illingworth

               They do not play,
               but live beside
               the tailored grass.

2015 Documentary Film -- Calculating Ada

     One of the mathematicians that I celebrate for her achievements is Ada Lovelace  (1815 - 1832).  Despite her short life (with death due to uterine cancer) Lovelace did important work on the development of computers (in her time called analytical engines).   

     Here is a link to a fascinating documentary, "Calculating Ada:  The Countess of Computing -- 2015,"  about the life of Ada. Thinking about Ada and exploring mathy poems led me to the collection Against Infinity (on my bookshelf) and to the following poem:

          Zero     by Harriet Zinnes (1919-2019)

Learning by Writing . . . and Revising . . .

      On X (Twitter) today I found the following quote posted by poet Ilya Kaminsky -- quoting recently deceased poet Fanny Howe (1940-2025).  Howe's poetic statement, quoted below, is one that applies (for me, at least) to both poetry and mathematics:

One way to understand your own condition is to write something and spend a long time revising it.

In revising you teach yourself.  You find your own information buried in your body.  It is still alive until you are not.

Here, at PoetryFoundation.com, are more than twenty of Howe's poems; I offer one of these below:

Mathematics linked to Water

      I was captivated by the title -- "He's Not a Poet, But He Plays One" -- of a poem (found here) by Donald Illich -- and it led me to want to explore this poet's writing.  Sometimes he uses mathematics -- not in major thematic ways but in very interesting ways.  Below I offer a poem that illustrates my view.

       Water Mathematics       by Donald Illich

             During the ocean we timed our lake,
             calculated the river and the stream,

             modeled the pond under dangerous 
             situations.  Water was really math,

Teaching Math with Poetry -- Some Activities

      The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) offers delightful and broad-ranging connections between mathematics and the arts.  An article that I discovered recently considers ways to use poetry in mathematics classes.  Found in the July 2023 issue, "Teaching Mathematics with Poetry: Some Activities,"  by Alexis E. Langellier (an adjunct professor of Computer Science at Moraine Valley Community College and a graduate teaching assistant at graduate student in Mathematical Sciences at Northern Illinois University).  Working toward a degree in Computer Science, Langellier has this intent:  My goal is to get more women in STEM.

Counting syllables . . .

Musing this morning, this blogger found these words:

 My
hands
hold a pen
and my fingers
translate thoughts into
words on paper.  Sometimes
I meet someone who
thinks with fingers
like I do.

from UPSTART -- A Magazine of Art + Culture + Life

THANK YOU, Greg Coxson,
for frequent sharing of MATHY POEMS with me!

      Gregory Coxson, professor and researcher in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the US Naval Academy, is a supporter of integration of the arts with the sciences and enjoys writing poems.  (Here is a link to his previous appearances in this blog -- including a couple of poems that he created.)  

    Greg has sent me some sample poems from the Summer, 2025 issue of  Up.St.ART, a magazine that focuses on and celebrates the arts in the Annapolis, MD region.  The issue that Coxson alerted me to has a special collection of Harvested Words -- poems built by selecting phrases from another publication.  From this collection I share a poem, shown below, that is built from phrases selected from the book Probable Impossibilities by Alan Lightman; the selector is poet Natalie Canavor of Annapolis, MD, and she has given me permission to include her poem here:    

     Glimmerings      by Natalie Canavor

Honoring Peter Cameron

THANK YOU, Peter Cameron,

for your generous sharing of mathematical ideas and their links!

      Happening soon -- the Conference on Theoretical and Computational Algebra -- scheduled to take place in Evora, Portugal, June 29 - July 3, 2025.  (Conference information is available at this link.)   A special feature of this conference will be the honoring of mathematician Peter Cameron.  As mathematicians and poetry-lovers and bloggers, Peter and I discovered each other online.  This  link leads to Cameron's first "Mathematics and poetry" blog posting (on April 6, 2010) and in Cameron's posting on July 14, 2010 (entitled "Mathematics and Poetry, 2") he links to my blog (first posting March 23, 2010) with this statement:

JoAnne Growney has posted on her blog a poem structured using prime factorisations: I think it is a lovely poem, and urge you to take a look.

This link leads to a summary-description of Cameron's blog and this link goes to his first "Mathematics and poetry" posting.   AND, here is a link to the search-results for the term "poetry" in his blog.

     I would like to celebrate Peter Cameron by sharing the opening stanzas of his ten-stanza mathy poem, "Millennium":