Winning Essays about Math Women

      The Association for Women in Mathematics each year sponsors an Essay Contest in which students (junior high, high school, and college) each interview a math-woman and write about it.  Contest winners for this year's contest have been announced and I invite you to go to this link -- to read well-written words about wonderful and inspiring women.

     One of the wonderful math-women in my life was Laura Church -- my teacher during my junior and senior years at Indiana Joint High School (in Indiana, PA) -- and here is a stanza that remembers her.

           Chalk in hand,
           she tosses her book,
           strides across the room,
           excited by trigonometry,
           excited that we,
           restless in our rows,
           caught some of it.
           Flamboyant, silver,
           fearless woman.

       This stanza is from "The Ones I Best Remember" -- the entire poem is found here.         More "girls and math" poems are at this link -- and the curious reader may browse or use this blog's SEARCH feature to find lots more!

A Poet with a Slide Rule

     In 1966 Life Magazine celebrated Danish scholar Piet Hein (1905-1966) in an article (found here, p. 55...) by Jim Hicks entitled "Piet Hein;  Denmark's Scientist-Poet."  The article begins with a story of Hein's proposal of a superellipse as a design for a city plaza and then goes on to share some of Hein's poetic creations -- short, witty poems that he called "grooks".

     This blog has posted grooks in the past (in May, 2010 and in August, 2017) and here are several more to enjoy.

Grooks by Piet Hein

     LAST THINGS FIRST

     Solutions to problems
          are easy to find:
     the problem's a great
          contribution.
     What's truly an art
          is to wring from your mind
     a problem to fit
          a solution.

Celebrate Amalie Emmy Noether

 On this date -- March 23, 1883 -- mathematician Emmy Noether was born:

       Emmy Noether's abstract axiomatic view
       changed the face of algebra.
       She helped us think in simple terms
       that flowered in their generality.  

The stanza above is from "My Dance is Mathematics" -- a poem of mine inspired by this bright and fearless mathematician.

Learn lots more about Noether at this link.

And, as we celebrate Noether, I urge more investigation and celebration of women in mathematics.  This link leads to a variety of sources -- and the blog SEARCH feature can be used for lots more.  For example, here are the results of a search for "math woman".

Happy World Poetry Day, 2022

 In the words of Albert Einstein (1879-1955),

"Pure mathematics is,
in its way,
the poetry of logical ideas."

IF/THEN #IfThenSheCan THE EXHIBIT

     One of the exciting current events here in the Washington, DC area is the #IfThenSheCan Exhibit  -- a monumental exhibit of 120 3-D printed statues celebrating contemporary women innovators in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)and features the most statues of real women ever assembled together.   One of the featured women is Minerva Cordero who "applies her expertise in finite Geometries to computer science and artificial intelligence, and works to increase representation of women in STEM.  

"The best gift to a young girl is the belief that she can do anything she sets her mind to do." "She will persevere! Minerva Cordero is a Puerto Rican mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her research on Finite Geometries has applications to several fields, including computer science and artificial intelligence. She has traveled all over the United States and Europe sharing her research and passion for Mathematics.  (Go HERE for more about Cordero.)  

Celebrate Pi -- and Poe

     Recently I came across a link I had saved to an article from last June in the Washington Post -- an article that considers Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and the scope of his influence.  Poe's poem "Sonnet -- To Science" was posted in this blog at this link back in October, 2013 but today, as Pi-Day (3.14) approaches, I am thinking of his poem, "The Raven."  Mathematician Mike Keith has written a version of "The Raven" in Pilish, an arrangement of words whose lengths follow the digits of Pi (when the digit 0 occurs, a 10-letter-word is used);  the complete Pilish version is found at this link.   Here are its opening lines:

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716 . . . .

 My own attempts at Pilish are much more modest and today I quote from a posting in March, 2018:

     Hug a tree, I shout -- hungering to defend trees
                    and every creation . . .

     In San Francisco, the Exploratorium Museum -- which reports that it invented Pi Day to honor not only Pi but also to remember Albert Einstein's Birthday -- will celebrate the holiday with programs that feature John Sims, a mathematical artist (and also someone who has been previously noted in this blog).

International Day of the Woman -- 03-08-2022

 Celebrate Math-Women with Poems

Throughout the history of mathematics, women have often been excluded or ignored.  This is changing.  I offer below some links to poems that herald math-women -- for you to enjoy and to share as we celebrate tomorrow  --  "International Day of the Woman." 

Celebrate Philippa Fawcett.          Celebrate Sophie Germain.

Celebrate Grace Murray Hopper.       Celebrate Katherine Johnson.

Celebrate Sophia Kovalevsky.          Celebrate Ada Lovelace.  

Celebrate Florence Nightingale.          Celebrate Emmy Noether.

And, as your time permits, browse this blog -- or SEARCH -- to find more . . .

Poetry of ideas -- an anagram, a palindrome

      Minnestoa math teacher Ben Orlin's website Math with Bad Drawings is a fun place to visit and Orlin often posts on Twitter -- browsing there recently I found this posting: 

Another frequent Twitter poster is UK-based Anthony Etherin -- a poet who likes to discover where he is led by following constraints; here's a sample:

Here are links to previous postings in this blog that cite Ben Orlin and Anthony Etherin.

World Book Day, celebrate Bright lady . . .

      Tomorrow, March 3, is WORLD BOOK DAY -- and I use the occasion to pull off the shelf one of my favorites, The Mathematical Magpie; stories, essays, rhymes, anecdotes, epigrams -- diversions (rational or irrational) from the infinite domain of MATHEMATICS, published in 1962 (Simon & Schuster, NY) by Clifton Fadiman (1904-1999).

    Here are two limericks offered by Fadiman -- and written by Manitoba professor A. H. Reginald Butler (1874-1944):        

     There was a young lady named Bright,
     Who traveled much faster than light.
          She started one day
          In the relative way
     And returned on the previous night.

     To her friends said the Bright one in chatter,
     "I have learned something new about matter:
               As my speed was so great
               Much increased was my weight,
     Yet I failed to become any fatter."

This link leads to previous postings in this blog that feature Fadiman.

A Picture is worth 1000 words . . .

     Tomorrow, March 1, we begin Women's History Month.  Join in celebration of math people with the Mathematician Poster Project  -- a poster series featuring modern mathematical role models, created by a group of math graduate students and alumni. All files are freely downloadable below, for sharing either online or in print.  The project is new and growing -- in the first six available posters, math-women featured therein include Pamela Harris, Maryam Mirzakhani (1977-2017), and Julia Robinson (1919-1985).

     Each of the posters contains a few words of wisdom that are, in their way, poetic. Here are words from Pamela Harris:          Mathematical
                                                                    discovery brings me
                                                                    great joy, yet I am
                                                                    far more than the
                                                                    theorems I prove.  

These two links -- Mirzakhani and Robinson -- lead to other postings in this blog that have included these math-women.

Black boys at the blackboard doing math . . .

     Last Wednesday evening the WordWorks-sponsored poetry reading, "Poets vs the Pandemic," brought back to my attention Pennsylvania poet Le Hinton who read from his recent collection, Sing Silence, and also some newer work.  Here is Hinton's very special poem about kids learning math.

     Uses of Cotton (Eraser)      by Le Hinton
 
      When my brother tells the story,
      he forgets to mention the sock, black
      and worn. Mom darned it in three places;
      Dad used it as an eraser.
 
      I never leave out the part
      about his teaching
      us numbers. When to add.
      How to subtract.
 
      He set up a blackboard in the back-
      yard and wrote problems on it. Even invited
      the neighborhood kids. We earned a piece
      of candy for each one we got right.      

Reduce stress in math class -- write a poem

       Recently I have come across a website for the New England Literary Resources Center -- and one of the suggestions offered for managing stress in a math class is by writing poems; here is a link to a sample of stressed students' poems. 

     My favorite suggestion for inexperienced poets who take pen in hand is to choose a syllable-count structure to follow -- such as a syllable-square or a snowball or a Fib . . .. AND, from the website Pen and the Pad, here are some additional ideas to consider:   How to Write a Mathematical Poem (penandthepad.com)

And, as I worried, I wrote this Fib:

          Stop . . .
          Think . . .        
          Wonder
          What to say!
          I gather my thoughts
          and hope I can make a poem!

February -- National Haiku-writing Month

     Whether to satisfy particular constraints when writing a poem is an idea that is very important to poets.  Some think that following strict constraints (such as building 14 lines of iambic pentameter to achieve a sonnet) is a process that leads the mind to discovery of new ideas.  Others think that constraints unnecessarily inhibit poetic ideas.

      Over time, the single-stanza poem called "Haiku" has been held to a variety of different standards.  Often the Haiku was expected to have three lines and seventeen syllables -- in a 5-7-5 pattern.  But this year as we now (in February) celebrate National Haiku Writing Month, relaxation of the syllable constraint is encouraged -- and the challenge of writing one-Haiku-per-day also is encouraged. 

Here, using syllable-counts, is a "no-seven" Haiku (offered on the seventeenth)!

               one two three four five
               six eight nine ten eleven
               twelve, thirteen, fourteen

And this link leads to lots of more-imaginative Haiku in earlier blog-posts.

Celebrate with a MATHY Valentine

 Celebrate Valentine's Day with mathy verse!

Follow this link to see the variety of examples in previous posts.

Seven-line Fibs

 In a previous post (on 2/2/2222), I shared a link to dozens of Fibs;
today I offer a Fib variation -- this time with 7 lines.

     Daughter of a statistics professor, poet A. E. Stallings is no stranger to mathematics.  Here is a link to several dozen of her poems posted by the Poetry Foundation -- and this link leads to a posting of her poem "Sine Qua Non" in this blog.  Recently I discovered Stallings 2012 collection Olives (a sample is available here) and in it, "Four Fibs."   Deviating from the six-line poem that is often called a Fib, Stallings' poems have seven lines -- with syllable-counts of 1,1,2,3,5,8, and 13 syllables: here is a sample.

from   Four Fibs     by A. E. Stallings 

          1.       Did
                   Eve
                   believe
                   or grapple
                   over the apple?
                   Eavesdropping Adam heard her say
                  To the snake-oil salesman she was not born yesterday. 

Here in the archives of the Cortland Review (where "Four Fibs" first appeared) is more of Stallings' work, including the other three Fibs.

The Poetry of Science

     Poet and teacher Sam Illingworth does much to celebrate the links between poetry and the sciences.  He is the founder of Consilience, an online journal that links poetry and artwork with science.  And he has a blog, The Poetry of Science, in which each week he presents a poem based on a new science idea that he has recently learned.  Here are the opening lines of a poem posted in August, 2021:

from     Artificial Weather    by Sam Illingworth

          Buoyant skies linger overhead,
          bulging at the seams
          with surging intent;
          capricious threats
          that fall indiscriminately
          against the statistical fortitude  
          of our modelled routines.     . . . read more here . . .

Here is a link to earlier mentions of Illingworth's work in this blog.

Words from Martin Luther King Jr.

     During this Black History Month or any month, Martin Luther King Jr is a man to remember and to honor.  His words have appeared in these earlier posts and, below, I offer a quote that is one of my mathy favorites:

             We must accept

             finite disappointment

             but never lose

             infinite hope.

New issue -- Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

     The online, open-access Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) publishes new issues twice each year -- and the first issue for 2022 is now available and is rich with math-poetry offerings.  One of the fun items is a folder of Fibs, featuring contributions (with email contact information) from:

Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Gerd Asta Bones, Robin Chapman,
Marian Christie, Marion Deutsche Cohen, Stephen Day,
Carol Dorf, Susan Gerofsky, Sarah Glaz,
David Greenslade, Emily Grosholz, JoAnne Growney,
Kate Jones, Gizem Karaali, Lisa Lajeunesse,
Cindy Lawrence, Larry Lesser, Alice Major,
Kaz Maslanka, Dan May, Bjoern Muetzel,
Mike Naylor, Doug Norton, Eveline Pye,
Jacob Richardson, S. Brackett Robertson,
Stephanie Strickland, Susana Sulic,
Connie Tettenborn, Racheli Yovel.

And the current JHM issue contains five more poems -- thoughtful and thought-provoking: "What's So Great About Non-Orientable Manifolds?" by Michael McCormick, "Wrong Way" by Joseph Chaney, "The Solipsist’s First Paper" by Sabrina Sixta, "Heuristic or Stochastic?" by E Laura Golberg, and "So Long My Friend" by Bryan McNair.

In closing, I offer here a sample from the folder of Fibs, this one written by Gizem Karaali, one of the editors of JHM.

               Where does math come from?
                         If
                         You
                         Want to
                         Do some math,
                         Dive into the depths
                         Of your mind, climb heights of your soul.

Thank you, Gizem Karaali, for your work in humanizing mathematics!

Math Communicators also are important

A posting early this month featured the noted Indian mathematician Ramanujan (1887-1920) who was mentored by the British mathematician G. H. Hardy (1877-1947).  In addition to his important achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis, Hardy is well-known for his book, A Mathematician's Apology (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969).  Here are its opening lines:

Hardy's words seem to echo a phrase I heard long ago --  "if you can't do, teach" -- a phrase that belittles teachers and other communicators.  But now, in the 21st century, this attitude seems to be changing  and perhaps it will continue that we give attention to the work of artists and teachers and writers who share mathematical connections.   Math is important -- SHARE it!

A diamond's beauty                               
          depends on reflection                 
                    of outside light.    

Keep Exploring . . .

     In addition to its published magazine, Scientific American has a large variety of blogs.  One of my favorites was Roots of Unity by mathematician Evelyn Lamb.  The blog -- with several hundred postings -- adds to the also-frequent articles that Lamb has contributed to that magazine,  In her posting, "What T. S. Eliot Told Me about the Chain Rule," she quotes these lines from "Little Gidding" by T. S. Eliot (published in Eliot's 1966 collection, Four Quartets) and discusses the outcomes of difficulty and confusion coupled with curiosity, energy, and persistence -- frequent ingredients of the process of learning new mathematics.

     from Little Gidding     by T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

       We shall not cease from exploration
       And the end of all our exploring
       Will be to arrive where we started
       And know the place for the first time.

Read more at Lamb's blog posting, "What T. S. Eliot Told Me about the Chain Rule."

Celebrating mathematics with song . . .

     Some of the most memorable links between mathematics and the arts are found in song-lyrics.  For example, "That's Mathematics" by retired American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician   Tom Lehrer (now aged 93):  Here is the opening stanza (the complete lyrics are found at this link):

    Counting sheep
    When you're trying to sleep
    Being fair
    When there's something to share
    Being neat
    When you're folding a sheet
    That's mathematics!             More mathy lyrics (by Lehrer and others) are found here.

     A current math educator offers us lots more lyrics to learn from and enjoy; from Larry Lesser -- a professor at the University of Texas in El Paso -- is a long-time creator of math-music works.  Here's a link to a list.

 This blog also has previously published lots of Lesser's fine work; here's a link.

Eyes on the Prize

     Today, the 3rd Monday in January, we celebrate the birthday of civil rights leader, Rev Martin Luther King, Jr,, (1929-1968) -- and I have been refreshing my memory of his courageous activity by watching episodes of the award-winning television series about civil rights struggles in the US, "Eyes on the Prize."

Here, in King's words (from his 1957 book, Stride Toward Freedom):

       If
       you
       can't fly
       then run, if
       you can't run then walk,
       if you can't walk then crawl, but what-
       ever you do you have to keep moving forward . . .

Download of a pdf of Stride Toward Freedom is available here.
    Previous postings in this blog featuring Martin Luther King may be found here.

+ plus magazine . . . living mathematics

     One of the very fine sources of interesting and new ideas from mathematics is +plus magazine -- available since 1997 from the University of Cambridge --  at this link.  Way back in 2010 they featured a Fib from this blog (at this link) and they have been generous in their mentions of Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters/CRC Press, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me.  They also have introduced (at this link) a wonderful collection of scientific Haiku (SCIKU  Icon Books, 2014) -- edited by Simon Flynn, written by students at the Camden School for Girls.  Here are two samples from that collection:

          Gravity

               An attractive force
               Between all objects with mass
               Just like you and me.

          Dissolving confusion

               To some, solutions
               Are answers; to chemists they
               Are still all mixed up.

Enjoy exploring this innovative online mathy magazine.

Write to learn ... follow constraints ... find poems

     Some people (myself included) take lots of notes during a lecture or other program -- for it seems that the physical activity of placing the words on the page is part of the process of installing the ideas in memory.  For me, also, the creation of a paragraph or a poem depends on the teamwork of hands and brain.

     One of the ways that poets engage themselves in creating new thoughts is by accepting the guidance of formal constraints -- creating the fourteen lines of a sonnet or the nineteen lines of a villanelle with strict patterns of rhythm and rhyme and repetition.  Below I consider the question of what I want for my birthday  --  and use that in my struggle to write a sonnet:

You asked me
      for a birthday gift suggestion . . .  by JoAnne Growney    

Mathematics gives our world its shape . . . fractals

     Poet Robin Chapman and Julien Clinton Sprott both were professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when their art-poetry collection  Images of a Complex World -- The Art and Poetry of Chaos first appeared (World Scientific Publishing, 2005) -- and now both are emeritus professors: Chapman in the Department of Communication Studies and Disorders and Sprott in the Department of Physics.  Here is one of the poems from that collection: 

          Bifurcations     by Robin Chapman

           This is the path that pitchforks
           in the yellow wood -- the one
           where you wanted to travel both,
           science and poetry,
           physics and art,
           and so bounced unpredictably back and forth,
           taking each as far as you could.

Notes:  The pitchforking path in the opening lines draws my thoughts to Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken." A bifurcation is, in general, a division of a structure into two parts. But when it happens over and over, things might change from patterned to chaotic . . .  Here is a link to earlier postings in this blog on fractals and chaos; here is a link to previous postings of poems by Robin Chapman.  This link leads to discussion of "bifurcation" at WolframMathWorld.  On page 82 of the art-poetry collection by Chapman and Sprott is this comment about the term:  There are dozens of different types of bifurcations, and they represent an active area of current research.  Below (and appearing on page 83 of the collection) is the following illustration:

 

In the preface to Images of a Complex World -- The Art and Poetry of Chaos, Sprott describes his process of choosing mathematical patterns and colors that would appeal to the human eye and Chapman offers insight into the inspirations for her poems.

India's National Math Day -- Poetic Quotes

     A recent math holiday that I remembered after it had passed is National Mathematics Day in India -- held on December 22 and celebrating the birth anniversary of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1870-1920).   (An interesting math-item from India is the claim that the first recorded use of zero occurred there.)

     Ramanujan is celebrated in a poem by Jonathan Holden.  Its opening lines: 

Holden's complete poem is found here in this posting from 2/19/2011.

Year-end Counting -- with Gratitude

     Year
     ends.
     I count --
     and count on --
     mathy poems shared
     here by countless poets. THANK YOU!

Amid uncertainties -- compose a Fib

How many Corona-virus cases will the new year bring?

Stop,
Think!       
Wonder
What to say . . .
I gather my thoughts
and hope I can make a poem.

Christmas is coming . . .

     This morning I did a blog search to see which of my previous posts included the word "Christmas" -- and this link leads to the results.  And, for me as for many, a very familiar favorite (also posted back in December 2015) -- linking Christmas and numbers -- is this:

This Wikipedia link offers some history of this song.

One-sentence Poems

     Recently I came across the website onesentencepoems.com and, enjoying the items' brevity, I did some browsing -- and term-searching -- looking for mathy poems.  Here are two samples by teacher and poet Jeffrey Park -- originally from Baltimore, now a teacher in Germany.

By Degrees   

She always sleeps with protractor and compass
on the bedside table, never knowing when
a sudden fit of geometry will strike in the night.

Numeric

Numbers pelt down from an infinite sky, neither irrational nor imaginary,
the angular ones, 4s and 7s, doing maximum damage.

These one-sentence poems -- and another --  by Jeffrey Park are found online here.

Mathematician with the Soul of a Poet

      One of my long-time math-poetry connections has been with math-teacher-artist-writer Sandra DeLozier Coleman (This link leads to her prior appearances in this blog.)  Coleman has had a long-term interest in the Russian mathematician-and-poet Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-1891) and has recently published Mathematician with the Soul of a Poet -- Poems and Plays of Sofia Kovalevskaya  (Bohannon Hall Press, 2021, available here from amazon.com); this volume that contains Coleman's translations from Russian along with background and thoughtful commentary.  The opening section of the book begins with these words from Kovalevskaya:

     I understand that you are surprised I can work at the same time
     in both literature and mathematics.  Many who have not had the 
     chance to learn more about mathematics confuse it with arithmetic
     and consider it to be a dry and arid science.  In truth, however,
     this science requires the greatest imagination, and one of the most
     respected mathematicians of our century has very rightly said
     that it is not possible to be a great mathematician without having
     the soul of a poet.                                                     S V. Kovalevskaya

Thank you, Sandy Coleman, for sharing Kovalevskaya's words with us!

STEM Writing Contests -- reminders . . .

WRITING deepens UNDERSTANDING!

For the reason above -- and for the possibility of winning recognition and prizes --  please consider the following contests.

The NYTimes has announced its 3rd annual STEM Writing Contest -- information is found here and 500-word submissions are invited during the period Feb 2-March 9, 2022.

To increase awareness of women’s ongoing contributions to mathematics, the Association for Women in Mathematics and Math for America are cosponsoring an essay contest for biographies based on interviews of math-women working in or retired from mathematical careers. The contest is open to students in Grades 6–8, Grades 9–12, and Undergraduate.  For more information, please visit the contest webpage or  contact the organizer, Dr. Johanna Franklin, at johanna.n.franklin (at) hofstra.edu.   The submission deadline is February 1, 2022.

Stories of Quadrilaterals

     Sometimes I have time to browse my shelves and rediscover old favorites.  Several of this blog's much-read poems have come from Scottish author Brian McCabe (Find blog search results at this link) -- and below I offer the first part of McCabe's two-part poem ("Two Quadrilaterals") entitled "The Restless Square."

Two Quadrilaterals    by Brian McCabe

     Part 1.  The Restless Square  

          There was a square who yearned
          to become something else.

          It stretched its legs to mimic
          an elegant rectangle but
          lost its balance, leaned over
          in a perilous parallelogram.    

Divided -- for facial recognition

Recently-retired Virginia dentist Eric Forsbergh sent me a mathy poem about the fascinating -- and controversial  -- process of facial recognition.   Enjoy!

      Divided                                                 
                  Data-driven approach divided the face into 63 segments.
                                                                Nature Genetics, Jan. 2021
       This, you can’t refute:
       How data banks embed us.

       Graphics now drag anyone
       into granularity. As if
       the features of a wave drew back
       to reveal a pebble beach.

Art / Poem / Numbers (posted 7/14/13, then lost)

     Recently I discovered a typo in my posting on July 14, 2013 of "Poem 25" by Kurt Schwitters.  My attempt to fix my typo led to accidental deletion of that post and so, I offer again this diagram-poem.  The poem -- IS THIS REALLY A POEM? --  appears in Numerals: 1924 - 1977 -- gathered by Yale Professor of Art History Rainer Crone (1942-2016), published 1978 by the Yale University Art Gallery. 

Poem 25 (elementary)     by Kurt Schwitters, 1923

A final comment -- when I read this "poem" aloud, I like the sounds of the words!

Sometimes ONE is also TWO

     A long-time supporter of this blog and of math-poetry connections is Gregory Coxson, Research Engineer at the US Naval Academy-- and he has recently shared with me the following poem, a translation of work by German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832); publication and translation details may be found online here.  Coxson was drawn back to his memories of this math-linked poem with the arrival of November and at his campus the bright-yellow leaves of the ginkgo trees.

     Ginkgo Biloba      translation of work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

       In my garden’s care and favour
       From the East this tree’s leaf shows
       Secret sense for us to savour
       And uplifts the one who knows.

       Is it but one being single
       Which as same itself divides?
       Are there two which choose to mingle
       So that each as one now hides?

       As the answer to such question
       I have found a sense that’s true:
       Is it not my song’s suggestion
       That I’m one and also two?

More about Goethe's poem can be found here at WisdomPortal.com.

Equation Poetry

     The term "Equation Poetry" is the title of an article by Radoslav Rochallyi  -- and posted on 11/9/ 2021 here in the MATH VALUES blog.  Rochallyi is a poet, essayist, and interdisciplinary artist living in Prague, Czech Republic and author of eight books of poetry.   For Rochallyi, "mathematical" poetry is not poetry about mathematics but poetry whose form is determined by a mathematical rule. 

     For example, he uses the formula for the area of a circle --  a = π r²  --  to form this example of Equation poetry:

     And, from the binomial formula,    

 

if we let x = time, a = being, n = now, and k = know -- our binomial formula becomes this poem:

 

 

Visit Rochallyi's article at this link to learn lots more. 

 

MANIFOLD: Poetry Inspired by Mathematics

     One of my recent pleasant pastimes has been spending time with MANIFOLD:  Poetry of Mathematics  by E R Lutken.   This poet's experiences prepare her well for merging different points of view -- a Southerner from a family that loved learning, Lutken became a family physician who spent years on the Navajo Nation AND then became a teacher of science and mathematics.  Read more about Lutken and MANIFOLD here.  

The "luc bat" is a Vietnamese poetic form that means "six-eight" -- 
Lutken's poem consists of alternating lines of six and eight syllables.

         Ars Parabola     by E R Lutken

Luc Bat for Horace and MacLeish  

       

          Can’t say what a poem is or not
          but graph it and the plot
          might trace that perfect spot for one
          whose vertex taps the sun:
          abscissa makes a run from rhyme
          to none and metric time
          devolves from frozen symmetry.
          Equal distance of free
          line and focal point defines sure
          sense, logic’s stare obscured
          as symbols play in pure sound’s bright
          flare. White-hot words ignite
          a sharp savor, the bite, the risk,
          an ordinate of bliss.

"Ars Parabola" is from MANIFOLD, by E R Lutken, 3: A Taos Press, 2021,  presented here with permission of 3: A Taos Press and the poet.  The poem first appeared in Welter Literary Journal.

Aelindromes -- and Pi

     On Twitter, I have seen frequent posts by UK-based writer Anthony Etherin -- and, encouraged by mathy poet Marian Christie, I have found it interesting to explore his work.  Etherin focuses on constrained, formal, visual, and experimental poetry -- he tweets @Anthony_Etherin; he manages Penteract Press.  AND  Etherin has invented a new type of writing-constraint called the aelindrome -- a bit like the palindrome ( such as  top spot  or  never odd or even ) except that the reversals involve more than one letter.   Here is a simple example of an aelindrome: 

melody, a bloody elm  which can be divided into   m el ody ablo ody el m

Found in a Twitter posting by @Anthony_Etherin on 10/21/21 is this aelindrome whose segment-lengths follow the first 14 digits of pi;  31415926535897

       Moonless Moonlight        by Anthony Etherin

       Low, fatal nights! Late, moonless.... Tense, we glitch.
       We swim bled sky, along the ashy glow.
       Shy glow along the ambled sky, we switch.
       We glisten -- see slate moonlight's natal flow.

Go here to learn more of Anthony Etherin and his work.

After loss we have nothing--which is something ...

     A poet whose work I much admire is A. E. Stallings -- born in the US, in Georgia, but now living in Greece.  This poem -- a sonnet -- deals with the paradox that nothing is something -- as with the integer zero and with the absence of a loved one.  The poem was written for her father who taught statistics at Georgia State University.

     Sine Qua Non     by A. E. Stallings

       Your absence, father, is nothing. It is naught—
       The factor by which nothing will multiply,
       The gap of a dropped stitch, the needle's eye
       Weeping its black thread. It is the spot
       Blindly spreading behind the looking glass.
       It is the startled silences that come
       When the refrigerator stops its hum,
       And crickets pause to let the winter pass.

       Your absence, father, is nothing—for it is
       Omega's long last O, memory's elision,
       The fraction of impossible division,
       The element I move through, emptiness,
       The void stars hang in, the interstice of lace,
       The zero that still holds the sum in place.

"Sine Qua Non" is found in Stallings' collection Hapax (Northwestern University Press, 2006) and also in the anthology Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters/CRC Press, 2008).

 A wonderful collection of Stallings' poems is available at the PoetryFoundation website -- and more about this poet and her work is may be found here at her at Stallings' website.

A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems

 Celebrate Raymond Queneau (1903-1976).

     In a recent posting, mathy blogger Ben Orlin noted (here in Math with Bad Drawings)  that 2021 is the 60th anniversary of an amazing poetry collection, One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, by Raymond Queneau.  The collection consist of 14 sonnets, with each line of each sonnet on a separate strip of paper -- allowing formation of a poem using any of the 14 first lines, any of the 14 second lines, and so on.  Here is an link to a earlier blog posting that introduces Queneau's collection and includes and interactive way to create a sonnet from the collection.

Here is a link to other postings from this blog that include Queneau.

Enjoy the Possibilities in a Multiple-Choice Poem

     Just as a test-taker mulls over which answer is correct, a poet mulls over word choices and what should come next.  South Dakota mathematician-poet Daniel May (professor at Black Hills State University) has broadly captured these decision choices in a poetry-form called a Digraph Poem or a Multiple Choice Poem.  I first learned of this idea several years ago at a Bridges Math-Art Conference at Waterloo, Canada when May and a colleague, Courtney Huse Wika, presented a paper entitled "The Poetics of a Cyclic Directed Graph" (available online here in the Bridges Archives).   In this paper is a poetry-creation by Huse Wika that involves various choices and orders of stanzas.

    This mixing of stanzas came to my attention again via a paper by May entitled "In the beginning all is null" which appeared in Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, Volume 14, Issue 1-2 (2020) as one of a group of "artist's statements."  In this latter paper, May thoughtfully describes his process of composing his poem --  he composed eight eight-line stanzas -- and the reader was to read a stanza, choose and read another stanza, and so on with a third.  In all, eight poems -- each sharing stanzas with others. 

     Recently a new online multidisciplinary journal, Poetrishy, has been born -- and it's first issue features another Multiple-Choice/Digraph poem by Dan May entitled "What the Body Does Next" --and available here.   Although you will need to follow the link I've offered to actually read the poem, I offer below a small screen-shot  -- so that you can get a sense of its structure.

Issue 1 of Poetrishy also contains work by these mathy poets -- Larry Lesser, Marian Christie, and  Marion Deutsche Cohen.  And several more authors whose work is fun to explore.

Interview a Math Woman -- then Write and Win . . .

     Amalie "Emmy" Noether (1885-1932) is one of the outstanding mathematicians of all-time -- and yet, during her lifetime she got very little of the recognition that she deserved.

Consider these lines:
          Today history books proclaim that Noether
          is the greatest mathematician
          her sex has produced.  They say she was good --
          for a woman.                   a stanza from my poem "My Dance is Mathematics"

In the past, people both inside and outside of mathematics have discriminated against women and minorities -- but the Association for Women in Mathematics -- AWM -- works to change that.   One of their activities to increase awareness of math-woman and their achievements is an annual essay contest.

Here is this year's announcement:

To increase awareness of women’s ongoing contributions to mathematics, the Association for Women in Mathematics and Math for America are cosponsoring an essay contest for biographies based on interviews of women working in or retired from mathematical careers. The contest is open to students in Grades 6–8, Grades 9–12, and Undergraduate.    For more information, contact the organizer, Dr. Johanna Franklin, at johanna.n.franklin@hofstra.edu or see the contest webpage at
https://awm-math.org/awards/student-essay-contest/.   The deadline is February 1, 2022.

Halloween Poems

            Double, double toil and trouble;
            Fire burn and caldron bubble.
            Cool it with a baboon's blood,
            Then the charm is firm and good.          from Shakespeare's Macbeth

Shakespeare's lines above are part of a collection of Halloween Poems offered at this link by the Poetry Foundation -- not a mathy group of poems but fun to read at this time of year.  Enjoy!

Visual Mathematical Poetry

          A wonderful place to visit -- and to stay for a while -- is the blog maintained by Kazmier Maslanka, Mathematical Poetry, found here at this link.  Maslanka's poetry is visual -- and here is a lovely sample that features the golden ratio:

"Golden Fear" by Kaz Maslanka

This link leads to Maslanka's blog and this link leads to information about "Rule 42, Stretched Language" -- an upcoming show at California's Bonita Museum that features his work.

Maslanka has been noted numerous times in this blog --
here is a blog link to another image from his mathematical-poetry-art.
This link leads to a thoughtful interview with Maslanka.

Inspired by Ten

      Here is an intriguing poem by Massachusetts poet Ellen Wehle that focuses on ten;  it is one of the works collected in Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters/CRC Press, 2008).

    The Song of 10     by Ellen Wehle

     From the Romans' decem our decibels and decimal system, O tenfold
     the sorrows of Israel, Decameron tales mean to be told over ten nights

     in December, solstice month frozen in moondrifts of snow.  Our fingers
     and toes.  Kingly ten-pointed stags reigning over Europe's greenwoods,

     for miners a measure in tons of coal or type of tallow candle weighted
     ten per pound, the legion poor mending by by its light.  What else is there

     to say?  Higher than nine.  A number whose power is mighty to multiply,
     comprising one and nil, wand and egg, gold spindle and heavenly wheel

     of goddess Fate who turns time and tides; what our parents say summer
     evenings, hearing our voices dart and flicker in neighboring yards before

     we dance from them into darkness and love's rule ends--I'll count to ten.

Maths and Poetry: Beauty is the Link

     One of the American Mathematical Society's pre-Covid Programs for students was a MATH POETRY Contest -- and details and resources are listed at this link.  An article offered there has the title "Maths and Poetry:  Beauty is the Link" -- an article by Peter Lynch, (emeritus professor at University College of Dublin's School of Mathematics & Statistics) published in 2019 in The Irish Times and available at this link.   Lynch also has a blog, That'sMaths.  The Irish Times article is available in his blog and he has a second posting about poetry entitled "Patterns in Poetry, Music, and Morse Code" -- it's available here.

     And today I also am thinking back to "Number Theory" by mathematician-poet Olga Taussky-Todd (1906-1995); I first posted it at this link in November of 2014; here are several of its lines.

       Number theory is like poetry
       they are both of the same kind
       they start a fire in your mind.
       Number theory is not just clever and smart
       it has a beauty that fills your heart.

A(nother) blog that celebrates Math-and-Poetry

      Recently I have come to know another strong advocate of math-poetry connections.  Marian Christie (read about her here) has had longtime interest in both mathematics and poetry and her blog -- available at  https://marianchristiepoetry.net/ -- explores topics that include "Poetry and Fractals," "Poetry and Number Sequences,"  "Poetry and Permutations," . . . reflection symmetry and square poems and Fibonacci poems . . .. and lots more.  Allow yourself time to explore when you visit https://marianchristiepoetry.net/. 

     When I am working with a group of students are nervous about their ability to write a poem, I often start by asking them to write a Fib, because it starts with single syllables,  In her posting about Fibonacci poems, Christie offers this simple     example of how the Fib structure can lead you to a poem. 
               I
               like
               playing
               with patterns
               in crochet, music,
               poetry and mathematics.

If you are new to Fibs, try this CHALLENGE: using the same first two lines as Christie used above, create a Fibonacci poem.  And then another ... and another.