Another prize-winning poem

     It was not until after my posting yesterday that I got permission from the third of the winners in the AMS 2020 student poetry contest to post his work.  Here is "The Number Won" by Austen Mazenko.   (And here is a link to a YouTube video of the January 18 event in which each of the winning poets reads their winning poem.)

Austen is a high school senior from Greenwood Village, CO. He loves words, numbers, and their patterns--and looks forward to pursuing mathematics in college next year.

THANK YOU to the American Mathematical Society for encouraging math-poetry!

Prize-winning math poems -- 2020 AMS contest

In 2020, for the second year in a row, the American Mathematical Society has held a math-poetry contest for students.  (Contest information is available here.)  The three winning poems in the 2020 AMS Math Poetry Contest are:

    "Outlier," by Sabrina Little, Mackintosh Academy, Boulder
    "The Number Won," by Austen Mazenko, Cherry Creek High School
    "x² + y² = 1(ife)," by Chenyu Lin, Colorado Christian University

From Chenyu (aka "Emily") and Sabrina I have received permission to present their poems here:

Lin's university studies include a major in Nursing. Her future plans include graduate study and either nursing education practice in under-developed communities or research in patient care.

Sabrina is a thirteen-year-old from Louisville, CO. Her hobbies include drawing, painting, and martial arts.

Further information about the contest -- and last year's contest also -- is available here.

Learning slowly . . savoring difficulty . . .

      There are geniuses (like Srinivasa Ramanujan) who learn mathematics quickly -- but I am not one of them.  In the following poem I reflect on how I learn . . . 

       Reflection     by JoAnne Growney

       I read and I did not understand.
       Less than a page.
       I read slowly and I did not understand.
       I read and took notes.
       My notes were three times as long as what I had read.

       I rewrote what I read in my own words.
       I reread it and inserted extra clarifying words.  

Poetically exploring the the invention of "i"

     Today's posting features work by Punya Mishra, professor and administrator at Arizona State University -- a writer who offers explanations of mathematical concepts in his poems, explanations that can appeal to students!   Mishra's website features several mathy poems and in our email correspondence he said that "The Mathematical i" is his favorite.  Here are are several stanzas:

from  The Mathematical i     by Punya Mishra

       The negative numbers were full of dismay
       We have no roots, they were heard to  say
       What, they went on, would be the fruit
       of trying to find our square root?

       Matters seem to be getting out of hand
       Since the negatives have taken a stand,
       On the fact that positives have two roots, while they have none.
       They plead, would it have killed anybody to give us just one?
       The square roots of 4 are + and – 2! As for -4 ?  How unfair,
       He has none! None at all. Do the math gods even care?

Remembering Leonardo da Vinci

     One of the readers featured at the recent 1/17/2020 JMM math-poetry reading was Italian mathematician/poet Rosanna Iembo.  Below, with Iembo's permission, I offer a sample from her poem, "A New Dawn"  -- a poetic narrative in the voice of Leonardo da Vinci, a genius of the Italian Renaissance.  Here are a few lines from this narrative; the entire work is available from the poet (contact information is offered here on her website.).

Referring to Luca Pacioli, the poet's voice of da Vinci says:

       With him
       a common feeling
       that did not end over the years.

       And in the "Proportion"
       which he decided to call
       "Divine"
       where I drew
       my polyhedra,
       understanding
       reached maximum splendor.   

Focus on FOUR

     Numerous poems by Canadian poet Alice Major connect to science and mathematics, and Major has connected me with Ottawa poet and mechanical engineer Sneha Madhavan-Reese -- who has shared with me not only poetry but also the new-to-me fact that her home city of  Ottawa lies on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation.  Here is Madhavan-Reese's poem, "Four," a thoughtful reminder of the vast versatility of mathematical notions.
   

       Four     by Sneha Madhavan-Reese

               Is 4 the same 4 for everybody? -- Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions

       My mother draws her four with a right angle;

       my father's is pointed on top.  My daughter's four,

       half the time, is backwards.  Her sister signs,

       tucking a thumb into her raised palm.   

Remember -- and Celebrate

     Today as we remember Martin Luther King, I invite you to visit postings in this blog that celebrate his life -- follow this link.  

And here is a link to

a poem by black mathematician, Benjamin Banneker.  

And one more link -- 

          this one to The Mathematician's Project 

("Mathematicians Are Not Just White Dudes.")

Math-Poetry tomorrow (1/17) -- in Denver at JMM

You are invited:

Sponsored by

SIGMAA-ARTS

and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

After the reading, the poetry program will be archived at this site.

The world of Math Girls . . .

     This past weekend my oldest granddaughter turned sixteen -- and I intensely want every career door to be open to her and to my other granddaughters (and my grandson).  The times are changing, new doors are opening for girls and women,  Still, these syllable-square thoughts are on my mind this morning.  

     Math Girls     

          A math girl must be       
          smarter than the rest –-
          yet must be modest
          and never claiming.
          Math-World is not fair.

And here are more of my mathy-perhaps-poetic thoughts.

     When you’re a math girl you may be the only girl in the room.
          A math girl must be three times as good to be equal.   

Browse Math-Poetry Links . . .

     Today I invite you to browse -- to spend a moment reading titles, clicking on a title that intrigues you.   ENJOY!

• TITLES OF POSTS (with links)
•      January, 2020
  •     We become what we think . . .
  •     With bits of mathematics, a poem for a New Year
•      December, 2019 
  •     Poetry made visual with math terms
  •     Math-poetry in support of immigrants
  •     Counted syllables --> holiday wishes . . .
  •     Where are you from?
  •     Writing to Learn -- try Haiku        

We become what we think . . .

     Browsing a recent issue of World Literature Today, I have found a thought-provoking activist poem by Linda Hogan that considers the ways we are shaped by "our numbers."  I offer below its opening stanzas:

       Embodied   by Linda Hogan

       I am embodied first by the numbers
       given my grandparents,
       no choice but to sign the Dawes Act.    

With bits of mathematics, a poem for a New Year

     Here -- containing bits of mathematical terminology --  is an excerpt from "A Poem for the New Year" by Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo (1932-1967).  

from    A Poem for the New Year     by Christopher Okigbo

          Where then are the roots, where the solution
          To life’s equation?

          The roots are nowhere
          There are no roots here
          Probe if you may
          From now until doomsday
          We have to think of ourselves as forever   

Poetry made visual with math terms

     As the year ends I have been revisiting books not seen for a while -- and one of them is Concert for Violin and Loneliness (Criterion Publishing, 2002) by the Romanian poet Mircea Goga (b. 1948). This collection was translated by Doru Radu and me.   Here are several samples in which Goga uses mathematical imagery to enrich his poems.

Poems by Mircea Goga

Proportions

Like an iceberg
of which only an eighth is visible --
of death we show only
life . . . 

Math-poetry in support of immigrants

     Winner of the Ted Hughes poetry award, British poet Hollie McNish has been in the news recently as she has been commissioned to write a new version of Antigone.  Also of note is that her poem "Mathematics" -- about immigration -- has had over 2 million viewers on You Tube.

Here are a few lines from McNish's "Mathematics":

     I desperately want to scream
     “Your maths is stuck in primary”
     Cos one who comes here also spends
     And one who comes here also lends
     And some who comes here also tend     

Counted syllables --> holiday wishes . . .

 * 
 My 
 wish for 

 you is peace 

 and happiness 

 and whatever else 

 will count for you.  THANK YOU 

 for  all  you  share with 

 me.  My nights and 

 days are rich 

 from your 
 gifts! 
    

Where are you from?

A question often asked when meeting someone new is "Where are you from?" -- one of my neighbors, who was born in India and now lives in Maryland, has written a poem that considers many ways one might answer that question.  Today, I have been thinking about it too.  Here are several of my beginning thoughts . . .

     I am from the barn yard, counting chickens
          I am from arithmetic, multiplying
               I am from algebra, solving
                    I am from calculus, integrating
                         I am from poetry, looking for words   . . .

Writing to Learn -- try Haiku

     Some of us learn a concept best when we write about it -- taking notes in class or while reading OR simply exploring our mind's thoughts.  Recently I discovered (in AAAS Science Magazine) these "Elemental Haiku" by Mary Soon Lee  -- offering a Haiku for each element in the periodic table.

For example, for Silicon (Si, atomic number 13) we find this:

Locked in rock and sand,

age upon age awaiting

the digital dawn.

Trying to find a Haiku to describe ALGEBRA, I came up with this:

Learn to represent

problems using equations--

then learn to solve them!

To explore previous postings of Haiku in this blog, here's a link!

Using mathematics in the Pursuit of Happiness

     One of my favorite blogs to visit is Maria Popova's Brain Pickings -- occasionally Popova's posts link mathematics and poetry    Here is a screen-snip of a Brain Pickings posting featuring verse by Lillian R. Lieber (1886-1986) -- one of my favorite math-writers.

From Lieber's 1961 book, Human Values: Science, Art, and Mathematics

Here is a link to this blog's previous mentions of Lillian Lieber.

Qatar teacher uses Arabic poetry to teach math

     Today I call your attention to an inspiring story -- Mohamed al-Janahi is an engineer-turned-elementary-school-math-teacher who uses Arabic poetry to help students understand mathematical concepts.  More of this story is found here,   In Arabic, in this YouTube video, al-Janahi tells of his work.
     And to add a bit of poetry in English, I offer a couple of stanzas of "Time" from my collection My Dance is Mathematics (now out of print but available online here).

from   Time       by JoAnne Growney

                  I

          The clock goes round —
          showing time a circle
          rather than a line.
          Each year's return to spring
          swirls time on time.  

Reaching for the stars . . . with science and poetry

     Astronomer Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley (1941– 1981) made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the evolution of galaxies (See, for example, Wikipedia).  California math teacher, editor and poet Carol Dorf celebrates Tinsley in the following poem. 

       Ask for a universe and what do you get?
                a Golden Shovel for Beatrice Tinsley            by Carol Dorf

       For a while scientists' proposed loopholes
       crossing the universe, wormholes a technique in
       which to traverse distance to other worlds, this

       unpleasant constraint which most reasoning
       holds us to a single solar system or may
       be, just perhaps a transit could exist  

Dogs Know . . . Mathematics

     A mathematics/statistics education researcher who writes both poetry and song lyrics -- who writes these often and well -- is Lawrence "Larry" Lesser, professor at The University of Texas at El Paso.  A search of prior postings in this blog leads to a variety of Lesser's poems: here's a link.
   And here is another Lesser poem to enjoy  -- this one found along with lots more math-poetry in the Bridges 2016 Poetry Anthology, edited by Sarah Glaz (Tessellations Publishing, 2016).

   
       Dogs Know     by Larry Lesser

       A dog-eared College Mathematics Journal lies
       open to a paper called
       "Do dogs know calculus?"
       where the author's canine travels land
       and water to reach most quickly
       the ball thrown
       into Lake Michigan.  

I am THANKFUL for . . . mathematics, poetry . . .

Today as I am preparing for Thanksgiving -- with its guests and travel and remembering -- my thoughts have turned back to Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), one of the first American poets whose work I came to know and love.  Here are several lines from Sandburg's "Arithmetic":

from    Arithmetic     by Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how 
     many you had before you lost or won. . . .
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
     to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. . . .
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
     gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
     better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sandburg's complete poem is available here.  And this link leads to previous postings in this blog of work by Sandburg that has math connections.

The Poet of Number -- syllables counted by primes

     Margaret Zheng is a first-year student at Haverford College -- with interests that include mathematics (see page 2 at this link) and music and philosophy and poetry . . .  Margaret was a finalist in her county's poetry contest last year and she has sent me the following poem -- with syllable-counts that are primes:  

the mathematician     by Margaret Zheng

(2)     mappings,
(3)     permutings,
(5)     patterns free-mingling
(7)     on the page of the poet
(11)    of Number.  'tis the heartbeat of Heaven she
(13)    craves to feel -- resonances -- to hear -- harmonies -- to
(17)    see -- beauties lost like children in the city swamp of lights 
               and shuffling
(19)    feet kicking the pavement never gazing upwards 
               in fear their genius would burst
(23)    free of the benumbing thuds of concrete and whisk them away
                to-wards infinities primal . . .
(....)

Thanks, Margaret, for sharing your musical words!

Multiplication is vexation ... the rule of three, etc.

     There are lots of childhood rhymes that celebrate the use of numbers -- here is a sample (found at this website)  -- the "Rule of Three" also is the subject of an interesting article by Ben Johnson, "Using the Rule of Three for Learning." 

          Multiplication is Vexation   

          Multiplication is vexation;
          Division is as bad;
          Rule of Three doth puzzle me,
          And Practice drives me mad.

     My recent browsing on the topic of math-phobia started when I came across this article focused on "tackle the fear head on" in the Washington Post.  I am grateful that many are working to help others overcome anxieties related to math.

Results of a search of this blog using the term "anxiety" may be found here.

Connecting mathematics to a larger world . . .

     I begin with words from a former student -- a postal worker who had retired early and went back to school to become a primary-school teacher:

                    I will teach
                    mathematics
                    by punctuality
                    and perfect attendance.

     In 1959, a Rede Lecture by C. P. Snow (1905-1980)  famously identified two separate cultures  -- the scientists and the humanists -- and these days what is often termed the STEM to STEAM movement is attempting to humanize the sciences by emphasizing the necessity of the arts in scientific study.  

Mathematics -- something useful ... or beautiful ...

     I offer a sample below from a poem by Jane Hirshfield entitled "Mathematics" and invite you to go here to read the entire poem -- and to reflect on it.  What does the poem say that is true about mathematics?

from Mathematics     by Jane Hirshfield

          I've envied those 
          who make something 
          useful, sturdy— or
          a chair, a pair of boots.  

Try it -- you'll like it -- write an ACROSTIC poem!

     When solving problems in mathematics, the constraints that are imposed on the solution often are helpful in solving it. As a simple example, if we are given the lengths of  the two shorter sides in a scalene triangle, the problem becomes easily solvable if we know that the triangle is a right triangle.
     Poets also often find constrains helpful in shaping their words into special meaning.  For example, the rhythm and rhyme scheme of the poetry-pattern called a sonnet have led to many notable poems.  In this blog, in earlier postings, we have celebrated the FIB -- a six line poem whose syllable-counts obey the Fibonacci numbers. A popular form of poetry for calling attention to a particular idea is an ACROSTIC poem -- a poem in which the first (or other) letters of each line spell out a word or phrase.  Here is my sample:  MATH POEMS HELP US SEE.   

     M     My
     A      algebra
     T      teacher
     H      has   

Weaving mathematics into poetry . . .

     José Alan Esparza Lozano is from the border region of Ciudad Juárez, México and El Paso, Texas -- and traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he graduated in 2019 from MIT with a BS in mathematics. Currently he is an award-winning graduate student in Santiago, Chile -- and he has a book of math-linked poems which I have much enjoyed reading (and from which I offer one of my favorites below).
    Lozano's poetry collection is called Chrysalis and Self -- and print copies are available at amazon.com -- moreover, if you are interested, you may contact the poet about the possibility of obtaining an electronic copy. Here, from page 36, is "Manywhere" -- and the poem is followed by a note from the end-of-book note that offers explanation of the mathematics contained therein:

Math-Poetry at JMM in Denver --January 2020

Deadline, November 12 -- Math-Poetry Contest for Colorado students

More details here in this blog-posting and 
here at the American Mathematical Society website.
Winners will read at the 2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM)
on January 18 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.

Deadline November 15:  details below about how to sign up to participate 

in a JMM poetry reading on the evening of January 17 -- 

also at the Denver Convention Center.

    Continuing a math-meetings tradition, math poets will gather at JMM for an MAA Special Presentation: An Evening of Poetry -- this upcoming program will be on Friday, January 17,  7–8:30 pm, in Room 503 of the Colorado Convention Center.  In 2020, we want especially to feature poetry with a focus on how math can help unify us and improve our world.  

Celebrate Halloween with counting rhymes . . .

Halloween, Halloween, strangest sights I've ever seen . . .

Three Little Witches

One little, two little, three little witches
Fly over haystacks, fly over ditches,   

A pleasing permutation of lines -- the Villanelle

     A villanelle is a 19-line French verse form -- with lines divided into five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain -- a poem in which the first and third lines each appear four times.  This thoughtful repetition of lines, each time in a somewhat different context, is very pleasing -- and reminds me of the varied situations in which many mathematical models also are effective
     Well-known villanelles include “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, and Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” (And here is a link to this blog's offerings of villanelles.)   Below are the opening stanzas of a fine villanelle by Emily Grosholz; the entire poem is included in an article in The Mathematical Intelligencer, "Figures of Speech and Figures of Thought" (available here).  The article -- written by Emily Rolfe Grosholz and Edward Rothstein -- is based on an interview of Grosholz at New York City's Poets House and celebrates her book Great Circles -- The Transits of Mathematics and Poetry (Springer, 2018).  

from  Holding Pattern     by Emily Rolfe Grosholz   

Playing with permutations of the nouns of a poem

     Founded in 1960, OULIPO  (short for French: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) has been active in the exploration of the effects of constraints or arbitrary rules  in the production of literature.  
          Developed in the 13th century, the sonnet 
                   (with 14 lines, 10 syllables per line and a prescribed rhyme scheme) 
                       is a well-known member of these "constrained" forms.  The Haiku is another.
     Published in 2005, the Oulipo Compendium, Revised and Updated (edited by Harry Mathews and Alastair Brioche, Make Now Press, Los Angeles) contains definitions and examples of a large variety of rule-following writing.  On page 173 we find some interesting comments about language by French poet Jean Lescure (1912-2005):
     " . . . Lescure remarks that we frequently have the impression 
          that language in itself  'has something to say' and that nowhere 
          is this impression more evident than in its possibilities for permutation.  
          They are enough to teach us that to listen we must be silent; 
          enough to transform a well-oiled bicycle into a well-boiled icicle."   

Poems and Primes

     Recently Press 53 offered a "Prime 53 Poem" poetry challenge -- to write a poem meeting these conditions:
     ·      Total syllable count of 53
     ·      Eleven total lines 
     ·      First three stanzas are three lines each with a 7 / 5 / 3 syllable count 
     ·      Final stanza must be two lines with a 5 / 3 syllable count, for a total syllable count of 53
     ·      Rhyme scheme (slant/soft rhymes are fine) aba cdc efe gg
A Prime 53 poem’s total line count is a prime number (11), the syllable count in each line is a prime number (7 / 5 / 3) with each line of the last two-line stanza a prime number (5 / 3), and the poem’s total syllable count is a prime number (53).

Small and large -- poetic views . . .

     A favorite on my bookshelves is The Book of Disquiet: the Complete Edition by Fernando Pessoa*.  Here is a math-poetic item from this "diary" by Pessoa:

     In a discussion about how a village may be larger than a city 
          because you can see more of the world there  -- Pessoa quotes (on p. 241) 
               these lines from Alberto Caeiro, one of his writing personas: 

                 Because I am the size of what I see
                 And not the size of my own stature.

     These lines are from Millimeters (the observation of infinitesimal things),
          on pp. 67-69: