Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic

My introduction to French poet Guillevic (1909-97) came from UK poet Tim Love who found three of his triangle poems translated into Italian.  Jacqueline Lapidus translated them for me from French into English, after which I also found Guillevic's collection Geometries (Englished by Richard Sieburth, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) -- with its circles, ellipses, parallels, and so on.  And so, beyond these three, there will be more to enjoy later.  

More from Guillevic

     My October 13 post presented three small poems by the French poet Guillevic (1909-97).  Strongly drawn to his work, I have purchased the collection Geometries (translated by Richard Sieburth, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010);  Guillevic has found in each geometric figure a personality and a voice.  Buy the book and enjoy!
     Here are three additional samples from Geometries:

A Diagonal . . . and so little time . . .

On my mind in recent days is the problem of "so little time."  About a year ago I posted a wonderful mathy poem by Californian Brenda Hillman about time.  The complete poem is available here; below I supply the opening lines:

       Time Problem     by Brenda Hillman

               The problem
                of time.      Of there not being 
                enough of it. ...

Over the six years of this blog, the most-visited post has been "Varieties of Triangles"  with poetry by Guillevic.  Here is another of that poet's charming geometric offerings:

 Diagonal   by Guillevic  (Englished by Richard Sieburth)

       To get where I have to go
       I claim right of way.

       Because I provide communication
       Between two angles

       I take precedence
       I take up residence.

       I cross first,
       Come what may.
 
"Diagonal" is found in Guillevic's Geometries,from Ugly Duckling Presse (2010). Buy it!

Geometry Personalities

 When a triangle talks to a square, what does she say?

Among my favorites of mathy poems are poems by Guillevic (1907-1997) -- in which the poet gives personalities to mathematical objects -- and many of these are available in Geometries, Englished by Richard Sieburth, Ugly Duckling Presse Ltd., Brooklyn, NY; 2010.

Here, from the August, 1970 issue of Poetry Magazine is Guillevic's "Parallels" -- one of four of his poems translated from French by Teo Savory and  published there.

Searching this blog for previous connections to work by Guillevic 
leads to this link to a list of posts.

From 2010 -- titles and dates of posts

List of postings  March 23 - December 31, 2010
A scroll through the 12 months of titles below may lead you to topics and poets/poems of interest. Also helpful may be the SEARCH box at the top of the right-hand column; there you may enter names or terms that you would like to find herein.
    Dec 31  The year ends -- and we go on . . .
    Dec 30  Mathematicians are NOT entitled to arrogance
    Dec 28  Teaching Numbers
    Dec 26  Where are the Women?
    Dec 21  A Square for the Season
    Dec 20  "M" is for Mathematics and . . .  

Perpendicularity -- a symmetric relation

     In 2010 both my October 13 and November 20 posts feature small poems by the French poet Guillevic (1909-97). Strongly drawn to his work, I have purchased the collection Geometries (Englished by Richard Sieburth, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010); Guillevic has found in each geometric figure a personality and a voice. Buy the book and enjoy! Here is one of my favorites from the collection:    

Highlighting Poetry-Math Favorites

     Looking back over the eight years of  postings in this blog, I find several items that have stood out in their popularity.  In case you have missed any of these, I list their titles (with links) below.
          The favorite posting, by a large margin, is: 

     "Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic" posted on October 13, 2010.

Three other postings fall into second place:
          "Mathematical Limericks" posted on March 29, 2010,   
          "Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . .)" on February 12, 2011,
          "Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi" on September 2, 2010.
Two more-recent and popular postings are:
          "The World is Round or Flat" on January 8, 2016,
          "Celebrate Math-Women" on March 2, 2017.

The list of labels in the lower right-hand column of  the blog gives the names of numerous mathematicians and topics that are featured in the blog -- and one may click on any label to retrieve the posts.  Additionally, the blog's SEARCH feature may be used to locate postings on a particular topic of interest.

Personalities in Mathematics . . .

     For those of us who spend time in the World of Mathematics, numbers and other mathematical objects often develop personalities.   Previous posts have featured poems by the French poet, Guillevic, whose verses animate geometric objects.  Today I offer (below) a photo of  "Glum Circles" -- found in the imaginative collection, Lyrical Diagrams   -- with prose poems by David Greenslade and images by Carolina Vasquez (Shearsman Books, 2012).

An online sample of the first 17 pages of Lyrical Diagrams is available here as a pdf.

Links to Favorites

     According to Google, these posts are the top ten favorites of visitors to this blog in the six years since my first posting in March, 2010.  Perhaps you will want to visit one of them.  Or use the SEARCH box to find something favorite of your own.   I invite your comments.  Which posts do you especially like?

Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic     Oct 13, 2010

     Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and .. .)     Feb 12, 2011  

          Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi     Sep 2, 2010

               "Mathematical" Limericks     Mar 29, 2010

                     Ray Bobo's mathematical poem Jul 14, 2010 
Poems of set paradox and spatial dimension   Feb 22, 2011
     Poems of Calculus   Apr 23, 2010

          Primes and a paradox   Aug 14, 2015
               Theorem-proof / Cut-up / poems   Nov 11, 2010
                     A Fractal Poem   Dec 28, 2014 

Favorite -- most visited -- Posts

Because this blog has more than a thousand posts, spread over more than eleven years of posting, finding best information can be challenging.  The SEARCH feature in the right-hand column) and this linked file of names of poets and math-people and blog-content topics can be useful.  And, when time permits, browsing offers lots of fun.  Here, for the curious are the TOP TEN postings -- that is the postings that have had the most visitors since the blog's beginning in March, 2010.    

ENJOY!

These are titles and links to the ten posts most visited in this blog since its beginning in 2010.

from September 2, 2010    Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi   

from October 13, 2010   Varieties of Triangles -- by Guillevic

from March 29, 2010    "Mathematical" Limericks   

from February 11, 2011   Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . . )

from September 29, 2017   Poetry . . . Mathematics . . .  and Attitude  

from February 18, 2011   Srinivasa Ramanujan    

from January 8, 2016   The world is round . . . or flat!

from February 22, 2011    Poems of set paradox and spatial dimension

from  June 22, 2021    Interpreting Khayyam -- in Rhyme

from April 19, 2010      Poems with Fibonacci number patterns

 

The Girl Who Loved Triangles

     I found this poem by Michigan poet Jackie Bartley when I was browsing old issues of albatross (edited by Richard Smyth) and she has give me permission to post it here.  Like Guillevic (see, for example, this earlier post), Bartley has found personalities in geometric figures.

To the Girl Who Loved Triangles     by Jackie Bartley

          Triangulation:  Technique for establishing the distance between two points
                                      using a triangle with at least one side of known length.

One girl in a friend's preschool class
loves the triangle.  Tanya's favorite shape,
the children call it.  Simple, three sided, at least

one slope inherent, slip-slide down
in the playground of mind.  Tension and its
release.  Sure balance, solid as the pyramids.  The 

This blog (then and now) and Pascal

     When I began this blog in 2010, I imagined up to 100 postings -- I saw it as a way to share math-related poetry that I had written and gathered during my years of teaching.  Now, as I prepare my 748th post, I am thinking about how I can organize my posts to make them findable and useful to the reader who visits and browses herein.

One thing that I have recently done is to update the blog's searchability -- 
in the right column you will find a search box.  

If you enter a term like "math" into the box, the search finds most of the posts in the entire blog and is thus not very helpful -- but you might try the term "triangle" and you would find about 20 relevant posts; one of them (from October 13, 2010) has the title "Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic" and is the most-visited entry herein.  If you are, like me, someone who looks for math publicity and opportunities for girls, you may choose to enter "girl" in the search box.  This search, too, will lead to about 20 postings.