The Icosasphere

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) has fun with the sounds of words -- including a number of math terms -- in her playful poem that celebrates inventive constructions from bird nests to a steel sphere-like icosahedron to the Pyramids of Egypt. 

The Icosasphere       by Marianne Moore

“In Buckinghamshire hedgerows  
     the birds nesting in the merged green density,  
          weave little bits of string and moths and feathers and
                                                                                    thistledown,  
              in parabolic concentric curves" and,  
     working for concavity, leave spherical feats of rare efficiency; 
          whereas through lack of integration,  

Sustainability and Collapse

     Last Tuesday evening mathematician Charles Hadlock offered an excellent lecture -- "Sustainability and Collapse" --  at the MAA Carriage House.  Hadlock's presentation offered examples and arguments from his recently published book, Six Sources of Collapse (MAA, 2012).  This must-read book describes investigation into common dynamics of disaster processes from the extinction of the passenger pigeon to the Chernobyl accident to extreme weather and . . .
     My lingering thoughts about Hadlock's engaging lecture led me to look for poems related to sustainability and collapse.  From my bookshelf I pulled Making Certain It Goes On:  The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo (Norton, 1984) and found this poem of collapse and counting:

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg      by Richard Hugo (1923 - 1982) 

Four -- square, colors, theorem, poem

During my doctoral study days at the University of Oklahoma I knew several mathematicians who were working on graph theory problems -- and a couple of them worked on problems related to the Four Color Conjecture -- a conjecture (dating back to around 1850) that became a theorem in 1976 with a proof by Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken verifying (using many hours of computer time).  It asserts that four colors are sufficient to color any plane map so that no pair of adjacent regions have the same color.  This theorem has been again on my mind since reading the obituary of Kenneth Appel, who died on April 19.
Here is a link to an earlier posting (5 November 2011) on the Four Color Problem with a poem by Frank Bernhart.  And here, repeated from that post, is my poetic version of the Four Color Theorem:

        F O U R
        F O U R
        F O U R
        F O U R

Enough for everyone -- Russell Libby

Are you looking for a poem on a particular math topic?  One search strategy is to go to the Poetry Foundation website (another is to click on the green SEARCH BOX in the right column of this blog) and enter your math term into the search box; if, for example, you enter "geometry" one of the poems you find will be this one by Russell Libby (1956  -2012).  Both poet and organic farmer, Libby believed in sustainability:  all it takes is one well-cared-for seed to grow and spread.  Here is his "Applied Geometry." 

     Applied Geometry     by Russell Libby

     Applied geometry,   

     measuring the height   

     of a pine from   

     like triangles,   

Growing lines . . .

 Maximizing Meaning (maybe)

How
many
syllables
will fit on this
single line segment?
_____________________________________________________

Zero Power

To neutralize the differing effects of any non-zero numbers -- to wipe out vast differences between numbers -- we may raise each of them to the power zero.*  When 0 is applied as the exponent for any nonzero number, the result is 1.  So 7⁰ = 1 and 5378 ⁰ = 1 and (.001)⁰ = 1.   And here are "zero power" and other mathematical concepts interpreted in a poem.

     N to the Zero Power     by Laurie Clemens

     He holds one photograph
     featuring one man and one woman.

     Three birds perch on two wires
     forming an isosceles triangle over the last
     red brick street in town.

Geometry of a hawk's flight

One of the poets featured in the current Poetic Likeness Exhibit -- featuring photographs and paintings and sculptures of poets along with a few favorite lines -- at the National Portrait Gallery is Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989).   Although I hugely admire Warren's novel, All the King's Men, I am not very familiar with Warren as a poet.  The gallery posted, beside Warren's photo, a few lines about a hawk.  And I went searching online to find more.  The exhibit's quote was from Warren's "Mortal Limit" but my search led first to "Evening Hawk" -- with a first stanza bright with geometry;  I offer that stanza here.

Earth Day, 2013

     OUR earth is finite. 
     Its resources are
     finite. No clever
     transformation can

     convert the
     finite to
     infinite.

     We must
     learn to

     share.  

And, here is a link to a previous Earth Day posting.

Counting the seconds . . .

During these difficult days of fear and explosions -- in Boston and West, Texas and where next? -- I have turned to my copy of View with a Grain of Sand (Harcourt Brace, 1993) by Polish Nobelist Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) to find "The Terrorist, He's Watching."  Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, this moving poem of numbers and tension also appears in Szymborska's 1976 collection, A Large Number. 

The Terrorist, He’s Watching     by Wislawa Szymborska

The bomb in the bar will explode at thirteen twenty.
Now it’s just thirteen sixteen.
There’s still time for some to go in,
and some to come out.  

A poem for your pocket

April is National Poetry Month.

April is National Mathematics Awareness Month.

Today, April 19, is Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day.

Here is a mathy poem that will fit in your pocket.

       14 Syllables     by JoAnne Growney

       A hen lays eggs
       one by one;
       the way you
       count life
       is life.

The poem "14 Syllables" is collected in Red Has No Reason (Plain View Press, 2010).

Truth and Beauty

     In both mathematics and poetry, truth and beauty are linked.  The true is likely to be beautiful, the beautiful is considered likely to be true.  
     Early in April I visited an interdisciplinary mathematics-and-literature class at Arcadia College to talk with them about some of the ways mathematics influences poetry.  The course I visited was was aptly titled "Truth and Beauty."  Thanks to Marion Cohen -- mathematician, poet, and course professor -- and to her students for the enjoyable time we had together.     
     Today, thinking back to that Arcadia class, I offer a translation of a poem by Romanian poet Marin Sorescu (1936-1996) which links the mathematics of counting to the literary god, Shakespeare.  Enjoy. 

Neglecting important numbers

Not Getting It     by JoAnne Growney

We

want to

be cool.

We want cool

rooms, drinks. With

cool mindsets 

we “forget” that 

we said, we’ll cut

emissions of

greenhouse gases 

Light and laws, letters and numbers

     We viewers of the world see it through a variety of lenses -- for some of us music shapes our view, for others it is color, for others history; still others see through a lens of mathematics  -- perhaps geometry, or number, or randomization or . . .
     The Greek Nobelist (1979), poet, and essayist Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996) was once nicknamed "the sun-drinking poet" for views seen in The Axion Este / Worthy It Is.   A sample from this collection, "They Came," is offered below -- this poem is not only rich in the imagery of light but also pays tribute to geometry and numbers.   

"Sustainable" in a poem

As I have mentioned previously, April is National Poetry Month and also Mathematics Awareness Month -- and the mathematical focus is "Mathematics of Sustainability."  To try to connect these April celebrations, I went to the website  www.Poets.org  and searched for a poem containing the word "sustainability."  There I found  "Patience" by Kay Ryan which contains these lines:

       Who would
       have guessed
       it possible
       that waiting
       is sustainable —
       a place with
       its own harvests.    

Please go here to Poets.org to read Ryan's entire poem.

Miroslav Holub -- interview, poems

Frequent readers of this blog probably know that Miroslav Holub is one of my favorite poets.  And it was a great delight to get a recent e-mail message with a link to a previously unpublished 1994 interview with this scientist and poet -- appearing in the April 2 posting in the Virginia Quarterly Review blog.  The interview, conducted and written by Irene Blair Honeycutt, has these opening sentences:     "Miroslav Holub (1923–1998) is one of the most internationally well-known Czech poets. He led a career as a scientist, and his poetry is known for its sharpness and wit, as well as descriptions of aging and suffering." 

April is . . .

April is National Mathematics Awareness Month.  The theme is SUSTAINABILITY and some ideas for learning and doing may be found here (including a rich selection of essays).
April is National Poetry Month.  One of the month's special events is a poetry contest (open to all) sponsored by the Arlington Library.  Poems for the contest are to be formed from stacked titles of CDs or books and then photographed for display.  For example:

What are the odds -- of a kiss?

Virginia poet Bernadette Geyer has a new (2013) poetry book, The Scabbard of Her Throat -- and I have been exploring these engaging poems of family and fantasy.  And finding among them this mathy poem, "Odds":

Odds     by Bernadette Geyer

Eighty percent of all plane crashes occur in the first
three minutes or in the last minute of the flight.

The odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 18 million
but you can't win if you don't play.  In Peru,

Your Favorite Number

In the Washington, DC area's Beltway Poetry Quarterly, edited by Kim Roberts, I recently found this lively number-poem by Pennsylvania poet Barbara DeCesare in the Summer 2012 issue that features poets in the federal government.  Enjoy.

     Your Favorite Number   by Barbara DeCesare

     I hope you have a damn good reason
     because when you let a number like that in,
     it’ll turn on you so fast.
     36: spine on spine, a grudge,
     a house divided, half-sisters,
     or the twins,

Counting syllables -- and allowing abortions

In a perfect world in which every pregnancy is wanted and every life supported with love, there would be no need for abortion.  As I work toward that world, I have penned this small syllable-square poem of concern about the vulnerability of young lives.

       36 Syllables       by JoAnne Growney

       More than abortion, fear
       unwanted lives -- saddest
       consequence for children
       conceived without a plan
       for parenting.  There is
       more than one way to die.  
 

Marianne Moore -- counting syllables

     Currently (until 28 April, 2013) at the National Portrait Gallery is an exhibit of video and audio portraits of a selection of American Poets -- browsing on the gallery's website I found here today (and related to the exhibit) a recording Marianne Moore's "Bird-Witted."
     Marianne Moore (1887-1972) was one of my first-loves in poetry.  Her line in "Poetry" about presenting for inspection "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" became my goal also.  And when I discovered that her poems frequently were constructed by counting syllables I began to consider that strategy.  These opening stanzas of "The Fish," found in its entirety at poets.org, illustrate Moore's interesting stanza-designs based on syllable-count-patterns.

              The Fish     by Marianne Moore   

1            wade
3            through black jade.
9                 Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
6                 adjusting the ash-heaps; 
8 or 9                opening and shutting itself like

Power of a theorem

My poetry-math colleague Sarah Glaz has sent me the following pantoum -- which she says was inspired by Ken Yee's pantoum posted in this blog on 6 March 2013.  Thanks, Sarah, for this poem that not only involves permutations of lines but which also aptly connects the adventure of exploring mathematics with the adventure of self-exploration.  Bravo!

A pantoum for the power of theorems      by Sarah Glaz

          The power of the Invertible Matrix Theorem lies
          in the connections it provides among so many important
          concepts… It should be emphasized, however, that the
          Invertible Matrix Theorem applies only to square matrices.
                                           ―David C. Lay, “Linear Algebra”
 
The power of a theorem lies
In the connections it provides
Among many important concepts
Under a certain set of assumptions  

Number gives things a body . . .

Poet Stephanie Strickland majored in mathematics as an undergraduate and she uses mathematical imagery freely in her work  -- in a career that has included pioneering leadership in creating and understanding electronic literature.  The following paper-and-ink poem, "Numberbody," is part of a collection that celebrates and illuminates the French philosopher Simone Weil.

     Numberbody     by Stephanie Strickland

     The world stained to the bone raven blue
     with mathematics as an embryo 

Celebrate 3.14 with poems of Pi

     Soon this year's version of the date 3.14 will arrive.  Pi-day!
     At the 2012 Bridges Conference in Towson MD I had the opportunity to hear "Art of π," a presentation by Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya that told of ways that the special number π has inspired artists and writers.  This blog has previously celebrated π -- for example on 6 September 2010 (featuring work by Kate Bush,  Robert Morgan and Wislawa Szymborska),  10 September 2010 (mnemonics for π, especially from Mike Keith) , 15 March, 2011,(a poem by Lana Hechtman Ayers)  27 November 2011 (a poem by Brian McCabe). 

Many Worlds, in a Pantoum

Permutations of lines and rhymes play with sound and meaning in ways that enhance both.  I particularly like the pantoum form. Hearing each line a second time -- with a new context shifting the meaning -- is an experience I particularly enjoy. This one is by Kenton Yee, a theoretical physicist working in finance, who writes both fiction and poetry.

The Many Worlds Interpretation of Classical Mechanics 

                   by Kenton K. Yee

Everything that can happen does.
She leaves work early
as a crackhead jumps off a bus.
A drunk runs a red light, barely.