OULIPO, Mathews -- and permutations of proverbs

     Harry Mathews (1930-2017) was a writer -- novelist, poet, essayist, and translator --whose work interests me a great deal.  He was the only American member of the original Oulipo -- a group formed around 1960 of writers and mathematicians who experimented with a variety of constraints designed to force new arrangements of words and thoughts.  An example cited in a NYTimes feature that followed his death on January 25 illustrates the challenges he set for himself:  he rewrote a poem by Keats using the vocabulary of a Julia Child recipe.  What some might have seen as pointless, Mathews found intellectually liberating.
Mathews served as Paris Editor of the Paris Review from 1989 to 2003 and the Spring 2007 issue offers an interview.   The summer 1998 issue offers samples of his perverbs -- that is, permuted proverbs:

"The word perverb was invented 

by Paris review editor Maxine Groffsky

to describe the result obtained by crossing two proverbs.

For example, "All roads lead to Rome" and "A rolling stone gathers no moss"

give us "All roads gather moss" and "A rolling stone leads to Rome"

Blog history -- title, links for previous posts . . .

      My first posting in this blog was nearly eight years ago (on March 23, 2010).  If, at the time, I had anticipated its duration, I should have made a plan for organizing the posts.  But my ambitions were small.  During the time I was teaching mathematics at Bloomsburg University, I gathered poetry (and various historical materials) for assigned readings to enrich the students' course experiences. After my retirement, I had time to want to share these materials -- others were doing well at making historical material accessible to students but I thought poetry linked to mathematics needed to be shared more.  And so, with my posting of a poem I had written long ago celebrating the mathematical life of Emmy Noether, this blog began.  Particular topics featured often in postings include -- verse that celebrate women, verses that speak out against discrimination, verses that worry about climate change.   

You're invited to:
Scroll through the titles below, browsing to find items of interest
among the more-than-nine-hundred postings since March 2010
OR 
Click on any label -- a list is found in the right-hand column below the author profile 
OR
Enter term(s) in the SEARCH box -- and find all posts containing those terms.

 For example, here is a link to the results of a SEARCH using    math women 

And here is a link to a poem by Brian McCabe that celebrates math-woman Sophie Germain.
This link reaches a poem by Joan Cannon that laments her math-anxiety.
This poem expresses some of my own divided feelings.

                                       2017 Posts

Honor Martin Luther King -- think on his words!

Celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

with his words-- which include several mathy terms.

We must accept 

finite disappointment

but never lose

infinite hope.                                                             Freedom is never

voluntarily given

by the oppressor; 

it must be demanded

by the oppressed.

When you are right                  

you cannot be too radical;                 

when you are wrong,                  

you cannot be too conservative.                 

Clear the head for best thinking by walking

     An engineer -- and friend -- who is a long-time supporter of the STEM to STEAM program is US Naval Academy Professor Greg Coxson.  Although a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Coxson has a strong interest in the arts.  He reads widely and has suggested a number of poems  for this blog.  Recently his recommendation was "Solvitur Ambulando" by Billy Collins, a poem found on pages 92-93 of the collection The Rain in Portugal (Random House, 2016).   Below I offer the opening stanza and the final, mathematical, portion of Collins' fine poem.  (Go to the book and read more!)

from   Solvitur Ambulando    "It is solved by walking."     by Billy Collins

       I sometimes wonder about the thoughtful Roman
       who came up with the notion
       that any problem can be solved by walking.
. . .  

A Marriage of Music and Mathematics

     Italian mathematician and musician Rosanna Iembo is an interdisciplinary star that I have had the pleasure of meeting -- and hearing --  at poetry readings held at mathematics conferences.  Iembo combines mathematical storytelling with live music; here is a link to a musical video of "The Marriage of Myia and Milo" narrated by Iembo, with musical accompaniment by her daughters -- and, below, I offer an abbreviated sample of a math-related portion of the poetic text.

from  The Marriage of Myia & Milo       by Rosanna Iembo

     A marriage, a marriage,
     said everyone.
     Myia, the daughter of Pythagoras and Theanò,
     marries Milo, the legendary athlete.

     And to the marriage
     even the stranger was invited
     because nobody was excluded
     in that ancient polis
     where Pythagoras founded a School.  

Mathematics and Gender . . . #MeToo

FOUND poetry in Peter's Quotations:  Ideas for Our Time, 

compiled by Dr Laurence J Peter (Collins Reference, 1993).

A woman has to be
TWICE as good
as a man
to go HALF as far.                                              Fannie Hurst 

Men seldom
make passes
at a girl
who surpasses.                                                 Franklin P Jones 

In short words . . . a Fib for the New Year!

       I
       want
       to wish
       you a fine
       New Year:  play with words
       and time. Count each short word and line.

     One of the fascinating web-postings I have found recently is this one in which mathematical ideas are expressed in short words -- that is, in words of one syllable.  As you might expect, these creations are sometimes awkward and sometimes insightful.  I invite you to try, as I have done above, your own expression of ideas in short words.

     And if you'd like to find more examples of Fibs (that is, poems in which the syllable counts per line follow the Fibonacci numbers), this link leads to the results of a search of this blog using "Fib."

Problems with no solutions

     The syllable-square stanza is a poetic form I often turn to when scientific terminology gives me little hope of matching traditional patterns of rhyme or rhythm -- counting syllables gives discipline and invention to my word choices, and these are for me essential in writing poetry.
     As a grandparent of school-age children  I am deeply worried about the world they are inheriting.  I want it to offer a healthy environment and safety with vast opportunities for women as well as men.  And my own writing often supports these views.   I encourage readers to use the blog SEARCH to find an assortment of poems on a theme -- such as "girl" or "environment" or  . . . For example, here is a link to postings that include the word opportunity.  Scrolling through that list leads to this posting of Eavan Boland's poem, "Code," which honors Grace Murray Hopper.

     And here is my small, worried square:     

          Square worries

          Unless miracles give
          our earth new resources
          that prove unlimited,
          unchecked population
          growth and climate change are
          problems with no solutions.

Counting toward Christmas . . .

     Like my grandchildren, I am counting the days until Christmas -- enjoying holiday lights that break the winter darkness and looking forward to family gatherings.  Below I repeat a growing snowball poem that I first posted at the Christmas season in 2012.

*
o n
t o p
g i v e
l i g h t
f r e e l y
f o r e v e r
a b u n d a n t
b r i l l i a n t
e v e r y w h e r e

LOVE MATH!

Holiday greetings and good wishes to ALL!

Continuing in the holiday spirit, here (repeated from 2010 posting) is a Christmas verse that celebrates pi (and helps us to remember its digits): 

It's time to correct our answers!

Verses with Two Voices
by JoAnne Growney

Questions                                                           Answers

Why doesn't the teacher notice

my hand is raised?

I'm waiting for all the boys,

so eager to speak, to finish ...

Why did he put my solution

at the bottom of the pile?

You are a girl .... It is best

for me to read the good papers first.

Have you had time to review

my proof of the theorem?

No, dear!

You are pregnant

and nothing will come of it ....

If you find moments between household and mothering,

pick up a pen and write a little rhyme.

Girls can do poems.

Visual poetry -- schemes with squares

Thanks to math teacher Sara Katz (at Manhattan's Essex Street Academy) 

and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics for today's poem.

SPLIT THIS ROCK -- Poetry that takes a stand!

For a poetry conference about 

POETRY THAT MATTERS

plan to attend Split This Rock's 2018 (April 19-21) Festival.

Information about the festival and how to register available here.

One of the most vital and persistent forces behind Split This Rock , an organization of socially engaged writers, has been Washington DC poet Sarah Browning -- THANK YOU, SARAH.  Here is one of Sarah's poems that presents some of the awful arithmetic of WAR.

Headline: Six Killed in Raid       by Sarah Browning

          Six American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter killed 
          in booby trapped house. 
                 -- Fourth paragraph of Washington Post story 

Math-Poetry from YouTube

     Using "mathematics" as a search term at YouTube.com leads to a huge number of interesting results -- and some of them are poems.  For example:

Dallas Slam Poet Alexandra Marie 

gives us "The Mathematics of Heartbreak".

Performance poet Dan Simpson from Salford, UK 

gives us "Applied Mathematics".

     Here next, in contrast to the BIG poems on YouTube, is a small mathy poem by Howard Nemerov (found here, along with other tiny Nemerov poems).  Thanks, Francisco, for alerting me to this treasure.

          Aesthetics     by Howard Nemerov

          The spider does geometry all night
          To take the fly, the dewdrop, and the sun’s light.

Calculating Pi -- a poet's view

     Initially I was drawn to a reading at The Writer's Center in Bethesda a couple of weeks ago because my neighbor, non-fiction writer and editor, Josh Tyree was reading from his London explorations, Vanishing Streets.  But the two writer's who read with Tyree also were known to me and are remarkable:
                    Annie Finch, a poet I have known through WomPo, an online community (founded by her) that supports women-poets.  Links to Annie's work in this blog -- which feature items that pay careful attention to syllable-counts -- are here, (for July 29, 1010) and here, (for June 27, 2015).
                    Gary Fincke, who was once almost a neighbor of mine -- I taught mathematics at Bloomsburg (PA) University and he taught and developed a creative writing program at nearby Susquehanna University -- and, before I moved south to the Washington, DC area, Gary and I knew each other through local literary events.  It was great fun to hear Gary read not only poetry -- I offer a sample of his mathy work below -- but also short fiction; I came away from the November 11 reading with a copy of his new book of short stories, The Killer's Dog (Elixir Press, 2017), which is a very intriguing collection.

Fincke's poetry does not shy from mathematics and "The Butterfly Effect" was posted in this blog back on November 22, 2010.  Here, from Fincke's collection, Blood Ties:  Working-Class Poems (Time Being Press, 2002) is "Calculating Pi."

Calculating Pi     by Gary Fincke

          "Pi has been calculated to 480 million decimal points."
                                                                                 --  Newsweek

Printed out, this means six hundred miles of digits,
A paper carpet from Pittsburgh to Chicago  

Science Poetry from Spain

     Several weeks ago I got an email from science journalist Elena Soto, from Palma de Mallorca, Spain, director of a weekly science supplement for the newspaper El Mundo.  Soto told me of her poetry -- recently, Kernlose Winter , a collection containing a number of poems with a scientific theme -- and her blog Establo de Pegaso that offers samplings of science-poetry fare.
     Soto's poem, "The equation of zebra stripes" -- offered below -- is about morphogenesis (the structural changes that occur as an organism develops).  From Kernlose Winter and found also in Soto's blog, the poem is dedicated to codebreaker Alan Turing.  I offer first Soto's English translation and, following that, her original Spanish version.  Thank you, Elena, for sharing this and the links to more of your work.

The equation of zebra stripes     by Elena Soto
                          for Alan Mathison Turing
Sadness,
singular as zebra stripes,
wrinkle borders on maps.
Enchants the pupil,
molds her to the smooth curve of the dunes.
Drag until the fur
the winding path of deltas
the coastline.

Burma Shave Mathematics

     One of the positive aspects of many math journals is that they are not shy about including poems that related to mathematics -- a negative aspect of that practice is that the poems are not included in the Contents listing for that publication.  And so, the fact that my poem "A Mathematician's Nightmare" appears on page 31 of the February 2001 issue of Math Horizons is lost to all but those of us who have a copy of that magazine.  Also unrecorded in these Contents is a page-full of rhymes written in response to a contest that asked for math poems composed in the style of road-side advertising for Burma Shave.  From the late 1920s to the early 1960s, US highway travelers encountered various series of small signs advertising the product.  I remember, as a child, attempting to guess what was coming next as our family car drove past a series of these signs.  Here are two examples (from Wikipedia):

   A shave / That's real / No cuts to heal / A soothing / Velvet after-feel / Burma Shave
   Past / Schoolhouses / Take it slow / Let the little / Shavers grow / Burma Shave  

What is THE GREATEST EQUATION?

     Sometimes a poem comes to me with a story -- and such is the case with the poem by Richard Harrison that I offer below.  As part of my Google-searching for online sites that contain both "poetry" and "mathematics," I found an article about a new book by Canadian poet Richard Harrison -- and the article included the statement, "Harrison also writes about super heroes, cosplay, spoken word poetry and mathematics."
     And so I hunted for an email address for Richard Harrison, then wrote asking to learn more of his math-poetry activity.  In his reply, he sent me the poem below -- his one-and-only mathy poem -- a poem he derived from material he wrote in response to a request by philosopher Robert Crease for candidates for "the greatest equation."   Harrison nominated "1 + 1 = 2" and provided an argument in defense of his nomination -- and part of Harrison's response is offered in the preface for Crease's book, The Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg (W W Norton, 2009).

Memorization and formulae

    A website I enjoy visiting is Ben Orlin's MathWithBadDrawings.com.  At every mathy website I visit,  it is my habit to do a search for "poetry" (just as on a poetry site I search for "math"). At MathWithBadDrawings I found this poetry sample concerning whether it is important to memorize particular basics:

       Monday we memorize
       That way we know
       Tuesday through Friday
       We think and we Grow

And, accompanied by a drawing, here are the first two of five stanza for a poem about the quadratic formula:     

Logic and Poetry -- from Lewis Carroll

     Australian poet Erica Jolly has alerted me to Lapham's Quarterly -- a magazine, both print and digital, that offers the view that history is the root of all education.  In particular, Jolly directed me to Lapham's presentation of "Sense and Nonsense:  Babies cannot manage crocodiles" by Lewis Carroll.  One of the Lewis Carroll logic puzzles presented therein relates to poetry -- and so I offer it here:

   1. No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste;
   2. No modern poetry is free from affectation;
   3. All your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles;
   4. No affected poetry is popular among people of real taste;
   5. No ancient poem is on the subject of soap bubbles.
Answer:  All your poems are uninteresting.

     That the Answer/Conclusion follows using the rules of logic requires some calculations which the interested reader is invited to pursue.  A solution (and additional puzzles) may be found here.

Stop saying GIRLS can't do MATH

     Found at Poets.org, this poem by Brenda Cárdenas that, like too many others portrays a girl in a can't do-math situation.  Another aspect of the poem, however, is its Spanish-language descriptions of Hispanic contributions to mathematics.  And, despite my protest, I find this a lovely poem and worth sharing.

     Calculations     by Brenda Cárdenas

     “I don’t know what to tell you.
     Your daughter doesn’t understand
     math. Numbers trouble her, leave
     her stuck on ground zero.”

                                    Y fueron los mayas
                                    quienes imaginaron el cero,
                                    un signo para nada, para todo,
                                    en sus gran calculaciones.

                     Is zero the velvet swoop into dream,
                     the loop into plumes of our breath?    

Mathematics -- vital imagery in SO MANY poems . . .

     Mathematics not only governs the structure of many poems -- of sonnets and pantoums and villanelles and more -- but mathematical imagery is an increasingly vital ingredient of the content.  Australian poet and STEAM advocate Erica Jolly has recently alerted me to the most recent issue (Volume 83) of the online journal Cordite Poetry Review  -- the theme of this issue: its opening essay, its 60 poems --  is mathematics.  Follow this link to Cordite and explore.
     An important resource for anyone seeking poetry-with-mathematics is the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics -- an online journal in which each biannual issue contains a varied selection of poems.  Here is a link to the July 2017 issue for you to explore.
     The humanistic side of mathematics has been explored for many years by the online British journal plus -- available here.  Perhaps you'd like to read an article on "the mathematics of kindness" or survey their articles, videos and podcasts about math-women or read a math-poetry book review -- all this and so much more at plus.

AND, when your time permits, browse here in my blog -- 

with more than 900 postings, much variety is offered.  

Scroll down OR use the SEARCH box.  Explore!

Probability and astonishment

     A small poem by Lia Purpura in the January 29, 2015 issue of The New Yorker delights even as it highlights the errors that many of us make in supposing that coincidences -- such as meeting some home town friend in a distant vacation spot -- are rare rather than probable.  

       Probability     by Lia Purpura

       Most coincidences are not
       miraculous, but way more
       common than we think--
       it's the shiver
       of noticing being
       central in a sequence 

Churchill -- Love and Information

     On a recent Thursday evening at the Forum Theatre in downtown Silver Spring I had the exciting privilege of seeing a splendid staging of Caryl Churchill's play, Love and Information.  Directed by Michael Dove and starring 14 versatile actors, this 57-scene play kept moving from one arresting moment to another.  Many of the scenes were poetic and several were substantially mathematical.  For example:

Mathematics in a scene from Caryl Churchill's Love and Information

Moving from STEM to STEAM in Australia

     "Poets," said Australian writer and teacher Erica Jolly, "find their themes in what matters to them."  This quote is taken from Jennifer Strauss's introduction to Jolly's poetry collection, Making a Stand  (Wakefield Press, 2015).  Erica Jolly is a retired teacher of history and English in southern Australia and works tirelessly toward ending the segregation between STEM disciplines and the arts and humanities.  In the lines below (taken from Making a Stand), Jolly is responding to words from former Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb who has said, speaking of mathematics, that he wants "all of us in the same tent."

Erica Jolly:   If he does, we must remove segregation of students 
          into supposedly separate cultures of science and mathematics versus 
          the arts and humanities as well as the unwillingness for STEM 
          to make interdisciplinary connections.

               Don't I as one of those deemed
               inappropriate for that elite
               have the right to access
               their language?

               to algebra, that Arabic word,
               giving me letters in place
               of apples or oranges to
               solve problems   

November 1 deadline for Math Haiku

     The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics has issued a call for Mathematical Haiku -- follow this link for the guidelines and instructions on how to submit your work.  Since I did not, at first, understand that the submission request is for only three Haiku, I gathered more.  Here are several of my leftovers -- involving multi-syllabic mathematical terms --  that I was not able to include in my submission:

Algebra

axiomatic

associativity

isomorphism

Calculus

differentiate

enthusiastically

conditionally

Geometry

non-Euclidean

axiomatization

parallelism

The Eyes of Isaac Newton . . . and so on

     A couple of weeks ago, Irish poet-physicist Iggy McGovern read here in the DC area and introduced readers to his new poetry collection The Eyes of Isaac Newton (Dedalus Press, 2017).  McGovern's poems involve a wide variety of scientific topics:  vision and color, genetics, quantum theory, and so on -- peopled with scientists and poets -- an amazing variety of topics and verses, scientifically accurate yet accessible to a non-scientist reader.
     McGovern's poems sometimes turn to humor and below I feature three examples of his clerihew.

     From Wikpedia (edited):   A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem  -- 

the first line gives the name of the poem's subject,  usually a famous person who at whom fun will be poked.  

The rhyme scheme is AABB, and the rhymes are often forced. The line length and metre are irregular. 

Because none of McGovern's clerihew feature women, I insert one of my own, 

about unheralded 20th century codebreaker Elizabeth Smith,

 subject of The Woman Who Smashed Codes  by Jason Fagone (Harper Collins, 2017).

Elizabeth Smith,

poet, technologist,

code breaker, Nazi exposer--

and, alas, no one knows her.

And, from Iggy McGovern:

          Albert Einstein
          liked to opine:
          "It's not very nice
          Of God to play dice."  

Perfectly Matched -- Poetry and Mathematics

     Mathematician Sarah Glaz has recently published a lovely and varied collection of math-linked poetry -- choosing her title, "Ode to Numbers," to echo Pablo Neruda. That Neruda poem is one that Glaz and I have long-loved -- it is included in our anthology, Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters/CRC Press, 2008).
     In recent days I have much enjoyed reading -- and rereading -- the variety of poems included in Glaz's new collection Ode to Numbers (Antrim House, 2017).  The publisher's author-page includes several sample poems and one of them, "A Woman in Love," offers this appropriate self-description:

               I see a streak of mathematics
               in almost everything.

Glaz's poetry takes a reader to childhood days in Romania, to mathematics conferences, to a variety of topics in the history of mathematics, and to the inner workings of a beautifully creative mathematical mind.  One of my personal favorites among poetic forms is the pantoum -- I love the way that permuted repetition of phrases offers surprising new meanings -- and Glaz's collection offers several of these.  Earlier in this blog (at this link) I posted "A Pantoum for the Power of Theorems" and below, with permission, I offer "Mathematical Modeling."

     Mathematical Modeling     by Sarah Glaz

     Mathematical modeling may be viewed
     As an organizing principle
     That enables us to handle
     A vast array of information 

The best words in the best order . . .

     Perhaps the way to link this couplet by Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) to mathematics is by referring to the notion of subset.   Wilbur is a favorite poet of mine, and he recently has died.

“Because he swings so neatly through the trees”   by Richard Wilbur

       Because he swings so neatly through the trees,
       An ape feels natural in the word trapeze.

I found these lines at PoetryFoundation.org and they are included in Wilbur's collection of illustrated wordplay, The Pig in the Spigot (Voyager Books, 2004).  Wilbur has been mentioned previously in this blog -- to explore, you may use the SEARCH box in the right column or follow this link.

mathematics is . . . the best words in the best order . . . is poetry

Mathy Double Dactyls

     The double dactyl is, like the limerick, a fixed verse form -- and one that is often humorous. From Wikipedia's, we have this initial requirement:  "There must be two stanzas, each comprising three lines of dactylic dimeter ( ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ˘ ˘ ) followed by a line consisting of just a choriamb ( ¯ ˘ ˘ ¯ ) . . ."   As the samples below illustrate, a double dactyl involves both nonsense and multi-syllabic words -- a non-trivial challenge; visit Wikipedia to learn more.
     The verses below are by Arthur Seiken, Emeritus Professor at Union College and I found them (with the help of editor Marjorie Senechal) in a 1995 issue of  The Mathematical Intelligencer (Vol 17, No 2, p 11). 

      If you want to see more of this poetic form, here are links to follow:  "Mathematical Double Dactyls" by Tristan Miller from the July 2015 issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics and the Higgeldy Piggeldy verse collection of Robin Pemantle.  And, again, here is a Wikipedia link that supplies formal details of these verses. 

Poetry . . . Mathematics . . . and Attitude

            Outwitted     by Edwin Markham (1852-1940)

            HE DREW a circle that shut me out—
            Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
            But Love and I had the wit to win:
            We drew a circle that took him in!

Today I invite you to browse  -- scroll down to look at recent posts and find something of interest OR use the SEARCH box to find lines by a particular poet or ones that feature particular mathematical terms.  Your search/scroll also can find poems that celebrate math-women and ones that protest abuse of our environment. THANK YOU for coming here to read.

Alice's Adventures in Numberland

     Recently I was alerted to some postings by Alice Silverberg -- she is a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California at Irvine and she is has made outstanding contributions to the field of Cryptography.  AND Silverberg has recently written down (at this link) some of her adventures as a math-woman.  She has entitled them "Alice's Adventures in Numberland" and she offers an email address for readers' comments.  ALSO here are links to two of my earlier postings featuring Alice Silverberg and poetry:  "A Quantum Romance" by Adam Rulli-Gibbs and several syllable snowballs.

As a recent film featuring NASA mathematician, Katherine Johnson, 

points out, math-women often are:

Hidden figures:

women no one

notices are

changing the world.

 Although not mathematical, "Diving into the Wreck" 

by Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) also is relevant here.

      Here is a link to an important article by Judy Green, "How Many Women Mathematicians Can You Name?"  Green, now an emeritus professor at Marymount University, opens her article (first published in Math Horizons in 2001) with the admission that until her last undergraduate semester the only female mathematician she could name is Emmy Noether.  Green's article, and a book she has co-written (with Jeanne LaDuke) and its companion website, help to remedy such situations for others.  There are many important math women to know!

     AND, if you still have time after exploring the links above, 

please visit my article (with poetry) "They Say She Was Good -- for a Woman,"

published July 2017 in the online Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.

Chinese Poem of the Cross

     At the website Aleteia.org (a Catholic social networking site that offers information that it deems pertinent to questions about faith) I found this interesting use of numbers in a poem written by the Chinese Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722).  

By the Kangxi Emperor (康熙帝) (4 May 1654 – 20 December 1722)

      The Kangxi Emperor (康熙帝) was the longest-reigning emperor in the history of China, and one of the longest-ruling monarchs worldwide. He ascended the throne at age 7, and reigned for 61 years. He was also a learned scholar, who compiled the Kangxi Dictionary and he was friendly to Christianity.

Women Count

     Today's commentary by Washington Post writer Dana Milbank offered a forceful reminder that women are often talked-over by men.   Milbank's offering comes just three days after I attended a special event at the National Museum of Women in the Arts that featured Judy Chicago, a feminist artist whose 1970s sculpture, "Dinner Party," celebrates not only the geometry of triangles and circles but also the contributions of women to our world -- 39 women celebrated by place settings and 999 additional women's names recorded therein.  Even though Judy Chicago insisted last Sunday that she is not fearless, her record of behavior is as fearless as I have known.  I think it is not possible to talk-over Judy Chicago.  She is someone I much-admire. 

Irish poet McGovern to visit US

     Irish poet and physicist Iggy McGovern will visit the US in October and is scheduled to read at 

The Writer's Center in Bethesda--Saturday, October 14 at 3 PM.  

McGovern's poetry has been featured earlier in this blog -- including "Belfast Inequalities" and "Proverbs for the Computer Age" on December 20, 2015  and "Geometry" on January 12, 2016.  This latter poem, "Geometry" is the opening poem in A Mystic Dream of 4 (Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2013) -- a sonnet sequence based on the life of mathematician William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865).  Also a poet, Hamilton grew up in Ireland in a time of prominence for British romantic poets of William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) -- and I offer below a McGovern sonnet that links Hamilton to Coleridge.     

Love Triangle . . ..

     One day, looking online for Edwin Abbott's 19th century classic, Flatland, I found not only Abbott's tale but some poetry.  At the website of Jerome White, a New Orleans math teacher, I found his mathy poem "Love Triangle," about which White says:    "Love Triangle" was inspired by my disappointment that Flatland: A Romance In Many Dimensions was deceptively devoid of "romance" in the modern sense of the word. 
     With White's permission, here is the poem -- offered with a preparatory remark:  the poet is sometimes explicit as he describes the geometry of sexual attraction.

Love Triangle      by  Jerome A. White

A trio of three-sided polygons sprawled across
the two-dimensional space of my notebook page
capturing my singular focus

The one on the left I tried to seduce
Only to find her obliquely obtuse
Her oversized angle symbolic
of the diverging vectors our lives would follow    

Truth in a circle . . .

     In these days when the truth-value of so much of what I hear broadcast is difficult to assess I have been drawn back to a poem by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), given below.  I used to agree with Dickinson; now I am less sure about how one may know the truth to tell it.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)     by Emily Dickinson

       Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
       Success in Circuit lies
       Too bright for our infirm Delight
       The Truth's superb surprise
       As Lightning to the Children eased
       With explanation kind
       The Truth must dazzle gradually
       Or every man be blind —

This poem and many others by Dickinson may be found online at  PoetryFoundation.org where they note that Dickinson's work is reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON: READING EDITION, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998, 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.  Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998).

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