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.    

Number personalities

In his collection, Zero, Scottish poet Brian McCabe raises questions about numerical classifications.  He begins "The Fifth Season" with "Everyone talks of the four / -- none speak of the fifth." Another poem, "The Seventh Sense, " moves from a similar beginning " . . . none speak of the seventh" into a dreamy apprehension of the magical possibilities of items not yet classified. The following selection from Zero, "Triskaidekaphobia," offers remedies for the fear of bad luck brought by 13. 

Monsieur Probabilty

In recent months, I have encountered a variety of poems about mathematicians (Links to several of these are provided at the end of this post.) and one of the sources is Scottish poet Brian McCabe's  collection Zero (Polygon, 2009).    It is said that life imitates art -- and this is vividly demonstrated by the art of mathematics as lived by Abraham de Moivre (1667-1754).  Here is McCabe's poem. 

How much for a digit of PI?

Scottish poet Brian McCabe writes playfully of numbers.  In the following poem he imagines an auction of the digits of π.

   Three Point One Four One Five Nine Two
   Six Five Three Five Eight Nine Seven Nine
   Three  Two Three Eight Four Six Two Six
       Four Three Three Eight Three Two
         Seven Nine Five Zero Two Eight             by Brian McCabe 

Sophie Germain dressed as a man to study math

One of the fine sources for biographies and other topics in the history of mathematics is MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, hosted by the University of St Andrews in Scotland.  Poet Brian McCabe cites this archive for historical information he used as background for his poems starring mathematicians -- found in his collection, Zero (Polygon, 2009).  Here is McCabe's poem for the outstanding French mathematician, Sophie Germain (1776-1831). 

Division by zero

The November 2011 issue of the Scottish ezine, The Bottle Imp, is just out and it includes my review of poet Brian McCabe's Zero (Polygon, 2009). To stir your interest, I include a few lines from McCabe's title poem (which chronicles the irregular history of zero) -- and then offer a human interpretation of division by zero in a poem by Ann McNeal.

Name five!

     A recent mailing from the National Museum of Women in the Arts offered me this challenge:  name five female artists!  Including friends who are artists made this easy -- but I needed a bit of internet help to list five famous names.  This effort has suggests another challenge: 

 NAME (at least) FIVE FEMALE MATHEMATICIANS ! 

One way to meet math-women is through a variety of poems that celebrate them -- lots of poems about math-women are found in this blog.  The Search and Labels features (in right-hand column of blog) can be useful.  Here are several links to get started:

       A poem by Brian McCabe about Sophie Germain;

              a poem by Eavan Boland about Grace Murray Hopper;    

                     a poem by Carol Dorf about Ada Lovelace;

                            a poem of mine about Sofia Kovalevsky;

                                   a poem of mine about Emmy Noether

And this link leads to a great variety of math-women resources.

A few words in closing:

          14 Syllables

          A hen lays eggs
          one by one;
          the way you
          count life
          is life.

from JoAnne Growney's collection Red Has No Reason (Plain View Press, 2010).

Poems starring mathematicians

      One of the challenges posed by a multi-year blog is locating interesting old posts.  One of  my frequent early topics was "poems starring mathematicians" and I offer links to several of these from 2011 below:
     December 8 "Monsieur Probability" by Brian McCabe
     November 13  My abecedarian poems, "I Know a Mathematician" and "Mathematician" 
     July 5  "Fixed Points" by Susan Case -- about mathematicians in Poland during WWII
     July 2  "To Myself" by Abba Kovner
     January 30  "Mr Glusenkamp," a sonnet to a geometry teacher by Ronald Wallace
     January 28  "Mathematician" by Sherman K Stein

     And, here is a link, via PoemHunter.com to "The Mathematician in Love," a poem by William John Macquorn Rankine, a poem that appears also in the multi-variable  anthology, Strange Attractors:  Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me.  Here is the first (of 8) stanza of Rankine's entertaining poem:

          A mathematician fell madly in love
          With a lady, young, handsome, and charming:
          By angles and ratios harmonic he strove
          Her curves and proportions all faultless to prove.
          As he scrawled hieroglyphics alarming.

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). 

Again we celebrate Pi !

 Now I give  -- I again enumerate π's digits, count out . . . 

3.141592653 . . . 

Tuesday, March 14, is Pi-day -- and I invite you to browse or SEARCH this blog for references to π / Pi and to learn more about Pilish (a language in which, as above, word-lengths follow the pattern of the digits of π).  Here are a links to several of the postings available:

       Rhymes to help you remember the digits of Pi
       Poetry that imagines auctioning the digits of Pi
       A Circle poem in Pilish 

Meeting Math People via Poems

     Mathematics classes are crowded with vital material and it is hard to find time to also consider the PEOPLE of mathematics -- one way to do this is by offering poems.  In the September issue of Math Horizons, my brief article, "Mathematics and Poetry" offers a variety of samples -- introducing poems by mathematicians (including William Rowan Hamilton) and poems about mathematicians (Brian McCabe writing about Sophie Germaine, Cathryn Essinger writing about her super-logical brother).  
     Here are a pair of lines from Voltaire about mathematician and scientist Émilie Du Châtelet:

               She has, I assure you, a genius rare.
               With Horace and Newton, she can compare. 

     A wonderful poem to add to those quoted in the article is in the voice of a math student who protests discrimination; it is by Caribbean-American poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992) and entitled "Hanging Fire" -- the complete poem is posted here.

               I should have been on the Math Team
               my marks were better than his

Here is a link to a pdf of the Math Horizons article.  The article does not contain web-links, BUT each of the poems may be found by searching this blog using the poet's name.

Celebrate Math-Women with Poems!

March is Women's History Month!
March 8 is International Women's Day!

and here in this blog we celebrate math-women with poems!

Herein appear lots of poems featuring women in math and the SEARCH box in the right-column may help you find them. To find a list of useful search terms, scroll down the right-hand column.   For example, here is a link to a selection of poems found using the pair of search terms "women  equal."   AND, here are links to several poems to get you started:

A poem by Brian McCabe about Sophie Germain;

a poem by Eavan Boland about Grace Murray Hopper;    

a poem by Carol Dorf about Ada Lovelace;

a poem of mine about Sofia Kovalevsky;

a poem of mine about Emmy Noether.

Internat'l Day of the Woman--Name 5 Math-Women!

      Today, March 8, is International Day of the Woman for 2021.  I continue to consider the challenge that I heard offered lots of years ago concerning women in the art world,  Name FIVE.  Each of us who cares about mathematics should be able to name at least five women who made important contributions to the field.  A wonderful resource is this website "Biographies of Women Mathematicians" -- maintained by Larry Riddle of Agnes Scott College that tells of the important lives of math women. 

Here are a few lines that from a poem I wrote that celebrates algebraist Amalie "Emmy Noether" (1882-1935); read more here.

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

Examining boundaries for Math-Women

Mathematician Ursula Whitcher is a versatile and interesting person -- and currently an editor for the American Mathematical Society's Mathematical Reviews.  It was my pleasure to meet and work with her at a conference on "Creative Writing in Mathematics . . ." in Banff in 2016.  Like me, Whitcher writes some poetry -- and here is one of her poems -- this one recognizing the isolation of math-woman Sophie Germain.

       Boundary Conditions     by Ursula Whitcher

               Royal Academy of Science, Paris, 1823

       This is her moment of triumph:
       a seat at the center, a node.
       Mademoiselle Germain sits silent,
       head upright, chaperoned.
       Academy members rise
       or dip; the speaker drones.   

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

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

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

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

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

                                       2017 Posts

Tomorrow is Pi Day

     Tomorrow is Pi Day and I offer no new poems but supply links to several previous posts.  Poetry of π may be found on 23 August 2010 (an "irrational sonnet" by Jacques Bens),  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) and 10 March 2013 (the opening lines of a poem "3.141592 . . ." by Peter Meinke).