Scientific American Shares Rhymes

      Lots of years ago, an important part of my awareness of poems that involve math came from reading work by Martin Gardner in his "Mathematical Games" in Scientific American . . . and it has been a delight to me to find poetry again in my issues of that magazine.   METER, a Scientific American feature edited by Dava Sobel, offers a bit of science-related poetry each month -- and the April 2026 issue features three mathy limericks by Jeffrey Branzburg (a retired math teacher and technology consultant).  I offer one of these limericks below.

       Topology     by Jeffrey Branzburg

Scientific American feature-- METER

Richard Blanco:     “An engineer, poet, Cuban American… his poetry bridges cultures and languages – a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future – reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”

– President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Blanco

RICHARD BLANCO is a professional civil engineer and a poet. He read his poem “One Today” at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, who selected him to serve as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history.  Blanco's inauguration appearance is reported at this link and connection to his inaugural poem is offered there.

    One of my current favorite math-poetry sources is Scientific American -- edited by feminist science writer Dava Sobel and presented each month under the heading Meter.  The selection for December, 2022 was "Uncertain-Sea Principle" by Richard Blanco.  Here are it's opening lines: 

Poetry in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

     The September 2020 issue of Scientific American contains a poem by British Poet Laureate Simon Armitage -- "Bring Back the Leaf"  -- AND an announcement that from now on each monthly issue will contain poetry. Like!
     Although this poem is not mathematical, I offer news of it here because the Scientific American's inclusion of the arts with the sciences and mathematics (STEM enlarged to STEAM) is a very important step.

From:  "Bring Back the Leaf"      by Simon Armitage

Bring back, bring back the leaf.
Bring back the tusk and the horn
unshorn.
Bring back the fern, the fish, the frond and the fowl,
the golden toad and the pygmy owl,
revisit the scene
where swallowtails fly
through acres of unexhausted sky.

The complete poem, "Bring Back the Leaf" is available here.

 At this link is info about a Simon Armitage poem that helps to clean the air . . .

 

The Geometry of Gerrymandering

gerrymandering: the practice of dividing or arranging 
a territorial unit into election districts in a way 
that gives one political party an unfair advantage in elections

       A recent Scientific American article by Manon Bischoff, "Geometry Reveals the Tricks Behind Gerrymandering," has reminded me of the horrors of this practice.  To express my thoughts about a particular concept, often a stanza that matches mathematical constraints helps me to carefully consider word choices and attempt clear and concise expression. The following syllable-square is a start toward expressing my point of view:

          For fair elections
          voting districts must
          be proportional,
          not maneuvered by
          gerrymandering.

This Scientific American author Manon Bischoff is an editor at Spektrum der Wissenschaft. She primarily covers mathematics and computer science and writes the column The Fabulous World of Mathematics. Bischoff studied physics at Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany and then worked as a research assistant at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany.

Martin Gardner collected poems

     Last week the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) had a special program honoring Martin Gardner (1914-2010); tomorrow (October 21) is the 100th anniversary of his birth.   The shelving in the MAA meeting room displayed copies of many of Gardner's approximately one hundred books.  However, none of the books displayed were books of poetry and, indeed, Gardner referred to himself as "an occasional versifier" but not a poet.  Nonetheless he helped to popularize OULIPO techniques in his monthly (1956-81) Scientific American column, "Mathematical Games," and he also was a collector and editor of anthologies, parodies, and annotated versions of familiar poetic works.  Here is a link to his Favorite Poetic Parodies.  And one may find Famous Poems from Bygone Days and The Annotated Casey at the Bat and half a dozen other titles by searching at amazon.com using "martin gardner poetry." 

Poetry at JMM -- groups, etc.

     A math-poetry reading on January 11 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego -- organized by Gizem Karaali (an editor of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics) and Sue VanHattum (blogger at Math Mama Writes) -- has been featured in Evelyn Lamb's Scientific American blog.  

Next year's JMM will be in Baltimore, MD during January 15-18, 2014.  

There will be a poetry reading -- details will be posted here when they're available.

     Sandra DeLozier Coleman is a retired mathematics professor who has for many years written poems that relate to math.  Her poem (presented below) about the definition of a mathematical group was featured in the Scientific American blog.  When DeLozier read the poem in San Diego, her introduction to it included these words: "I’m poking a bit of fun at the futility of expecting a mathematician to explain a math concept, as familiar to him as his name, in language even a first week student will understand. Here the voice is of an Abstract Algebra professor who is attempting to explain what makes a set a group in rigorous rhyme!" 

Are we speaking of "mathematics" or "poetry"?

     This week started with the excitement of an email message from Evelyn Lamb with a link to her Scientific American blog where she created a fun-to-take online poetry-math quiz based on an idea of mine (first published in 1992):

Can you tell the difference between mathematics and poetry?

Here’s a link to a SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN quiz to help you decide?

And a couple of centuries ago there was William Wordsworth -- who also contemplated both poetry and mathematics:

               On poetry and geometric truth
               and their high privilege of lasting life,
               From all internal injury exempt,
               I mused; upon these chiefly:  and at length,
               My senses yielding to the sultry air,
               Sleep seized me, and I passed into a dream.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

The Prelude, Book 5

Celebrate Martin Gardner (1914-2010)

Martin Gardner described his relationship to poetry as that of "occasional versifier" -- he is the author, for example, of:

     π goes on and on
     And e is just as cursed
     I wonder, how does π begin
     When its digits are reversed?

Celebrating Visual Poetry

     One of my delights in both poetry and mathematics is the multiplicity of meanings that come from careful attention to a particular text.  Today I have been revisiting the work of visual-poets Robert "Bob" Grumman (1941-2015) and  Karl Kempton and loving the surprises as I rediscover them.  Visual-mathematical poet Kazmier Maslanka in his blog, "Mathematical Poetry,"  generously features the work of many other poets beside his own -- and here (from this link) is one of Kempton's poems:

by Karl Kempton

Surprise me!

Bob Grumman, a mathy poet whose work has appeared in this blog (21 June 2010) and a blogger, has recently been invited to write a Guest Blog for Scientific American.  Here is a wonderful sentence about poetry that I have taken from his posting on 22 September 2012 (the third of his guest postings).

           And I claim that nothing is more important for a poet 
               than finding new ways to surprise people with the familiar.

Visit Grumman's Guest Blog to find his illustrations of poetic surprise; after a pair of visual poems, ten x ten and Ellipsonnet, he discusses a poem by Louis Zukovsky in which the poet describes his poetics using the integral sign from calculus:

∫ 

Zukovsky's definite integral (which Grumman tells us is carefully copyright-protected) has the lower limit "speech" and upper limit "music." 

Looking back . . . to previous posts . . .

  BROWSE and ENJOY!

Back in January 2020 I gathered a list of titles of previous posts and posted it here at this link.  And below I offer titles of postings -- with links -- since that time.

And, if you are looking for a post on a particular topic,
you are invited to explore the SEARCH feature in the right-hand column
OR to browse the list of  Labels (also to the right) -- and click on ones that interest you.

 

TITLES OF POSTS (with links) 

June, 2021    

      Math Communication with Poetry -- Strogatz Prize

      One More Love Poem

      Interpreting Khayyam -- in Rhyme   

      Putting CALCULUS into a poem . . .  

      Images of a Complex World   

      Encryption and Love   

      Every Seventeen Years . . .   

      A Life Made to Count   

      A Few Lines of Parody   

      Euclid and Barbie -- and attitudes toward math . . .

 

May, 2021      

      A Mathy Rhyme from Twitter   

      A Rhymer and an Analyst -- a Friendship   

      What does CANCEL mean? -- some poetic wordplay!   

      MoMath Celebrates Limericks!  

      Reflecting on Pi . . .   

      Keeping Track of Chairs   

      Mathematical Forms in Poetry . . .  

      Mathy Jokes    

      Climate Concerns   

      Celebrate Math-Women -- Celebrate AWM  

By Claude Shannon -- a Poem for Rubik's Cube

     Below I present the opening lines of an 80-line (plus footnotes) poetic creation by Claude Shannon (1916-2001).  A mathematician, engineer and cryptographer, Shannon is often called "the father of information theory."  My own acquaintance with Shannon's work came through the topic of error-correction codes.  Shannon's poem on the Rubik Cube was first published here in a Scientific American blog posting by John Horgan.

     A Rubric on Rubik Cubics (1)     by Claude Shannon
   
     Strange imports come from Hungary:
     Count Dracula, and ZsaZsa G.,
     Now Erno Rubik's Magic Cube
     For PhD or country rube.
     This fiendish clever engineer
     Entrapped the music of the sphere.   

Celebrating a math-woman

I am continually searching for poems that feature past and current math-women.
When you find one (or create one) I will be glad to have you send it along.

The lunar crater L Herschel is named for astronomer Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750-1848) -- and I have celebrated this math-woman earlier with two fine poems:  "Letter from Caroline Herschel" by Siv Cedering , and "Planetarium" by Adrienne Rich.  Now Herschel is the focus of a forthcoming book by poet Laura Long, The Eye of Caroline Herschel: A Life in Poems, (Finishing Line Press, 2013).  Here, from that collection, is "The Taste of Mathematics:  Caroline Herschel at 31" -- this poem also appears, along with a note about the full collection, in the July 2013 issue of The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.  

Mathematics Sets Sail . . .

     Each time I open a new issue of Scientific American I am delighted to turn to "Meter", a poetry feature begun in 2020 and edited by longtime science writer, Dava Sobel.  One of my early favorites in "Meter" (found here in the February, 2020 issue) is "Mathematical Glossolalia" by Jennifer Gresham -- and Gresham has given me permission to include the poem here:

     Mathematical Glossolalia     by Jennifer Gresham

     As though time could have a hobby
     we speak in eigenvalues, the harmonious
     oscillations in the green flash before sunset.

     We interpret raised to the power to mean
     you were taken in by numbers
     as a young babe & your childhood

     can be classified irrational. Euclid,
     Euler, the empty set's a nest atop a piling.
     If two words diverge on the open seas &

     the dot product is without derivative, the intercept
     can be found only by Venn diagrams on the tongue.
     Swallowed by wave functions, turning back, theorems

     to explain the circumference of illusion, good heavens,
     the sailboat's isosceles never goes slack.

Jen Gresham is founder of Work for Humanity; she has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland.  Information about her 2005 collection, Diary of a Cell, winner of the Steel Toe Books poetry prize, is available here.  At this link, a bit of background about the word "glossolalia".

Mathematician of the Day

     On this date, May 16, in the year 1718, the talented Maria Agnesi was born.  A great source of historical information about mathematics and mathematicians is MacTutor, a math-history website maintained by the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland.  One of the services that MacTutor provides is a list of names and information about mathematicians born on each day of the year.  For example, this link leads to the listing for May 16 -- and to lots of info about Agnesi.  Here, in a 7x7 syllable-square, is a brief sketch of  her life:

Maria Agnesi's life --

a complicated story --

wealthy and intelligent, 

in love with mathematics,

also very talented--

wrote a teaching text about 

differential calculus.

This 2018 Scientific American blog posting by Evelyn Lamb discusses a curve from calculus, often called (somewhat misleadingly) "the witch of Agnesi."   Previous mentions of Agnesi in this blog may be found at this link.

2017 is prime!

     For her December 31 posting in Roots of Unity (Scientific American blog) mathematician Evelyn Lamb wrote about favorite primes -- and starring in her list is our new year-number, 2017.
     My own relationship with primes also is admiring-- here is an excerpt from my poem, "Fool's Gold," (found in full here) that suggests a prime as a suitable birthday gift:

          Select and give a number.  I like large primes—
          they check my tendency to subdivide
          myself among the dreams that tease
          like iron pyrites in declining light.

     "Fool's Gold" appears in my chapbook, My Dance is Mathematics (Paper Kite Press, 2006); the collection is now out-of-print but is available online here. 
     Several poems about primes have been included in earlier postings in this blog.  For example, here is a link to a 2013 posting of "The Sieve of Erastosthenes" by Robin Chapman.  And, for further exploration, here is a link to the results of searching the six years of postings using the term "prime." 

Counting on numbers

Alan Michael Parker's anthologized and highly regarded poem "Family Math" begins in the style of a typical word-problem from Algebra -- and continues with a weaving of the ways that numbers describe our lives.

Family Math     by Alan Michael Parker

I am more than half the age of my father,
who has lived more than twice as long
as his father, who died at thirty-six.

Making something of nothing

     Was zero invented or discovered?  When and how?  By whom?  In "The Origin of Zero" -- an article published in 2009 in in Scientific American --  John Matson introduces an interesting history of zero (something vs. nothing and so on...).  Recently through the Splendid Wake poetry project (with an open-to-all meeting on Friday March 21 -- go here for details) I have connected with Washington DC poet William Rivera who has shared with me this poem that also examines the puzzle of the somethingness of nothing.

Nothing Changes Everything     by William Rivera

Celebrate 3.14 with poems of Pi

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

Snowballs -- growing/shrinking lines

Today's post explores poetic structures called snowballs developed by the Oulipo (see also March 25 posting) and known to many through the writings of Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner (1914-2010).  TIME Magazine's issue for January 10, 1977 had an article entitled "Science:  Perverbs and Snowballs" that celebrated both Gardner and the inventive structures of the Oulipo. Oulipian Harry Mathews' "Liminal Poem" (to the right) is a snowball (growing and then melting) dedicated to Gardner.  The lines in Mathew's poem increase or decrease by one letter from line to line.   Below left, a poem by John Newman illustrates the growth-only snowball.