A square poem of Romania

When I'm working on a poem that resists my efforts to express what I must say, sometimes I turn to the square for a rescue -- that is, I attempt to find the best words by re-forming the poem as a square (same number of lines as syllables per line).  That is how I came to the following poem, "The Bear Cave,"  (a 9 x 9 square). 

Playing with time

        Here is a poem that plays with the geometry of time -- a poem that first appeared in Mathematics Magazine, Vol 68, No 6 (December 1995), page 288.   Several of my other mathy poems written around that same time were collected in a booklet, My Dance is Mathematics, now out of print but available here on my website.  

       Finding Time     by JoAnne Growney

       Points chase points
       around the circle,
       Anti-clockwise,
       fighting time.
       You know time's a circle,
       rather than a line.          

Earth Day, 2011

      My father, a farmer, was respectful of our earth's resources.  Replenish what you take, he taught.   But some of us consume without replacement as if the earth is infinite in its capacities. 
     When growth is exponential, we may not see its consequences before it is too late.  (Have we already destroyed the balances of nature?)  The following 8 x 8 syllable-square poem restates a oft-used math-textbook question -- and reminds us that little time may be left to solve environmental problems.   

TalkingWriting with Mathematics

     TalkingWriting is an online journal that's celebrating its 10th birthday -- TEN YEARS of including mathematics in its mix of poetry.  This mathy connection has grown strong through the poetry editorship of Carol Dorf, poet and retired math teacher.  In this anniversary issue, poems are paired with works of visual art and the effect is stunning; from it,  I offer below samples of poems by Amy Uyematsu and by me.      
      Amy Uyematsu's poem "Lunes During This Pandemic"  thoughtfully applies the counting structure of the "lune" (aka "American Haiku") with three-line stanzas of 3/5/3 words per line.

Mathematics in Romanian poetry

     When I first visited Romania, I met Doru Radu, then a teacher of English at Scoala Generala "Andre Muresanu" in Deva. And Doru introduced me to his favorite poet, George Bacovia (1881 - 1957). Over time, we together translated many of Bacovia's poems -- and the bilingual collection plumb de iarnă / lead of winter was published in 2002 (Ed., Gabriel Stanescu, Criterion Publishing). Recently I scrutinized that collection (no longer available in print, but here, online) to look for mathematical lines to post in this blog. Alas, Bacovia offers no more than a couple images from geometry: "alone in deserted squares" (in Pălind / Fading) and "the wide, oval mirror, framed with silver" (in Poemă în oglindă / Poem in the Mirror).
     Although Bacovia did not use mathematical imagery, a considerable number of Romanian poets do, and below I offer links to my earlier blog postings of work by Ion Barbu, Nina Cassian, Martin Sorescu, and Nichita Stanescu. Enjoy!  

Counting the women

     The stimulus for this posting appeared a few weeks ago in the Washington Post -- in an article that considers the loneliness of women in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math). 
     For me, it was never a conscious thing -- the counting.  It simply happened.  The numbers are small and you know, if you are a woman and a mathematician in a room full of mathematicians, how many women are in the room.  Any room.  It is a small counting number.  Sometimes it is 1. 

Counting syllables and supporting life

Today, as abortion-protesters march in Washington, I look back to a post from March 25, 2013 and repeat it below.  I, too, cherish life -- and know that sometimes people face very difficult choices.

*   *   *   *   *

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

       36 Syllables       by JoAnne Growney

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

Counting syllables -- and allowing abortions

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

       36 Syllables       by JoAnne Growney

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

Conditional statements

The "If ... , then ... ." statements of mathematical theorems are often termed "conditionals." We have, for example, the conditional, "If x < 3, then x² < 9."  And so on.  Formal conditional statements in a poem can give it the feel of mathematics, even if no mathematical terminology is used.  This is  illustrated in "Omens" by the Romanian poet Marin Sorescu (1936-1996); Sorescu's poem also treats us to word-play  -- with allusions that range from nursery rhymes to religious narratives. 

Conversational mathematics

In recent weeks I have been experimenting with poems that use mathematical terminology, wondering whether -- since there are readers who are undaunted by unknown literary references (to Dante's Divine Comedy or Eliot's Prufrock, for example) -- some readers will relish a poem with unexplained mathematical connections.  In this vein I have offered "Love" (posted on on November 5) and now give the following poem, "Small Powers of Eleven are Palindromes":

A poem for a math-friend

     On July 14, 2012, my good friend, Toni Carroll, passed on. I first knew Toni in the 1980s as a colleague in the department of mathematical sciences at Bloomsburg University.  Her warmth and inclusiveness drew many people to her and I was one of these.  In my view she also was fearless.  While I continued to contemplate action, she moved quickly toward righting an injustice.  I have learned from her to be a bit more brave.  

Voices in a Geometry Classroom

I have been invited to return next week (October 20 at 7 PM) to Bloomsburg University, where I taught mathematics for lots of years, for a poetry reading.  Preparation for the reading (which celebrates my new book, Red Has No Reason) drew my thinking back to my teaching days at Bloom and to "Geometry Demonstration," a poem about the arguments in my head as I faced a particularly challenging class of geometry students.  Here it is.

Seeing Distance -- geometry in photography

One of my favorite poem-stanza styles is a syllable-square -- it distributes the weights of the words in a way that pleases me. The poem below has squares of several sizes and I post it as a prior-to-seeing-the-exhibit opposite to my response to photography currently displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum -- "Pilgrimage," by Annie Leibovitz. While many photographs, my own in particular, seem particularly flat, such was not the case with these. As if I were wearing special lenses, I was able to see and feel depth – not only in a view of Niagara Falls but also in the fabric and buttons of a dress that had belonged to Emily Dickinson.

BRIDGES Conference 2022 -- Math-Poetry

      A couple of months ago (here in my June 8 posting) I offered a link to information about poetry to be offered at the 2022 Bridges Math-Arts Conference -- held last week in Finland.  This link leads to a series of YouTube recordings of Bridges mathy poems and this link (at the website of organizer Sarah Glaz) offers written information about Bridges poets as well as sample poems.  Visit, read and listen, learn, enjoy!

     One of my poems that is included on the Bridges poetry site is entitled "Three-fold Asylum" -- a poem that explores various roles of the number three.  I offer it below:

     Three-fold Asylum     by JoAnne Growney

     Third door left on level three, my room
     holds steel furniture—its items three:
     double platform bed (for dreamless sleep),

     square corner desk with three-castered chair
     that spins, loops, and glides from the barred door
     to the dark window that sees nowhere.

A recent butterfly effect

The term butterfly effect has entered everyday vocabulary from the mathematics of chaos theory and refers to the possibility of a major event (such as a tornado) starting from something so slight as the flutter of a butterfly wing. This sensitivity to small changes is a characteristic of chaotic systems.  Recent news in Science magazine (9 May 2014) has drawn my attention to sea butterflies -- and the effect that ocean acidification is having on the lives of these tiny, fragile creatures -- and the environmental warning that this portends.  From the details offered in Science, I have constructed this poem of 4x4 square-stanzas:

       Warned by Sea Butterflies     by JoAnne Growney

       Sea butterflies --
       no larger than
       a grain of sand,
       named for the way  

Lost Women of Science

     One of the fascinating websites that I have found recently "Lost Women of Science" -- a podcast series available at https://www.lostwomenofscience.org/.  This site has lots of bios and I browsed among them using the search term "mathematics".  One of the fascinating stories that I found is that of Naomi Livesay -- who played a key role in the Manhattan project.

Learn more about Naomi Livesay at this link.

     These recent considerations of women in science have led me to recall a blog posting that I made back in June of 2012 that featured this poem of mine (with stanzas that are syllable-squares):

Can a mathematician see red?

Held late in July, this year's 2011 Bridges (Math-Arts) Conference in Coimbra, Portugal included a poetry reading for which I'd been invited to read but was, at the last minute, unable to attend. (See also 26 July 2011). Poets Sarah Glaz and Emily Grosholz each, however, read favorite selections from my work.  Glaz read one of my square poems, "The Bear Cave" (see 19 June 2011) and Grosholz read the poem shown below, "Can a Mathematician See Red?"