Triangular Poems

      A recent return to one of my favorite poetry collections -- alas, now out of print -- Against Infinity: An Anthology of Contemporary Mathematical Poetry, Edited by Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp (Primary Press, 1979), reacquainted me with this poem by Catherine M. Lynch (1939-2021)  -- a poem with its title and its syllable counts bieng Triangular Numbers):

A
Tripod is
A perfect plane as well
As the base of a triple point pencil.

The
Tripleness
In truth, is a kind of
Glory and power just being itself

And
Not even
Sacredness symbolized.
There is something triangular in love.

 Follow this link to find more blog postings that involved triangular poems.

Poetry of Colors and Geometry

      Recently I found online links to an exhibit by Japanese Surrealist Poet Kitasono Katue at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and further searching --  for words from this poet  -- led me here.  I offer a sample below -- and invite you, after reading here, to follow the links and explore this fascinating work.
     Here, is one of five poems by Kitasono Katue from Smoke's Straightline (Kemuri no chokusen, 1959), translated into English by John Solt and available at this link.

     Monotonous Space     by Kitasono Katue (1902-1978)

               1
     white square
     within it
     white square
     within it
     black square
     within it
     black square    

Be Guided by BEAUTY!

      When a person speaks of mathematics and poetry in the same sentence. I am interested -- and recently I came across an early-May financial article by Jason Ma which met that condition; its title and subtitle are:

‘Quant King’ Jim Simons (1938-2024) was a math and investing genius, but also a management wiz. Here are some of his lessons on leadership . . .

The article contains five "guiding principles" -- and I have grouped the words of the 3rd principle (which includes mathematics and poetry)  into the following syllable-count triangular poem:

       Be
       guided
       by beauty --
       true in doing
       mathematics or
       writing poetry, but
       also true in fashioning
       an organization that runs
       extremely well, accomplishes its 
       mission with excellence. Hope for good luck!

Here is a link to the full article by Ma.

Is your favorite poet a mathematician?

     The Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston last week gave a fine opportunity for me to connect with both mathematicians and poets, old friends and new ones. And to enjoy a celebration of the connections between poetry and mathematics. In the January 6 poetry reading sponsored by the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, there was much fine poetry. Several of the poems were by Carol Dorf -- whose work was read by Elizabeth Langosy, executive editor of the online literary magazine, TalkingWriting.  Good reads in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of TalkingWriting include both Dorf's introduction to some featured math-connected poems -- entitled "Why Poets Sometimes Think in Numbers" -- and Langosy's  impressions of the math-poetry reading.    

How should a professor groom for math class?

     One of the rewards of many new endeavors is making new friends -- and one of the special connections I have made through math-poetry endeavors is Gregory Coxson, an engineering professor at the US Naval Academy.  Greg has frequently alerted me to new mathy poems and, this fall, he sent me an interesting poem that he had written, a thoughtful comment on looking beyond appearances to what is more important. 

My PDE Professor    by Gregory Coxson

He sometimes wore those marine corps sweaters
  The ones in army green, that look the best
On more triangular figures than his.
  And then those ridiculous epaulets
How did his wife let him out of the house?    

Shaping POETRY with GEOMETRY

Syllable-count constraints help me to think carefully about word choices as I construct a poem.  Here are square and triangular stanzas that came into my head recently while I was jogging.

In addition, when working with students,  I often find that they explore their ideas most easily when I suggest that they follow syllable-counting constraints.