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Channel: Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics
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Uncertainty persists . . .

April 6, 2020, 9:13 am
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      In these days of coronavirus uncertainty and risk, my thoughts are drawn again and again to this couplet:

The Secret Sits    by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

     We dance round in a ring and suppose,
     But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
Lots more of Frost's words are available here.

And, as the coronavirus pandemic delays baseball season, here are additional Frost-thoughts:

     Poets are like baseball pitchers. 
     Both have their moments.  The intervals are the tough things.  

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Celebrate the lives of MATH-WOMEN via POEMS!

April 9, 2020, 11:22 am
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     This week I have learned that a lovely presentation of my poem, "With Reason  A Portrait of Sophia Kovalevsky," has been published in the April 2020 issue of Mathematics Teacher.
 The Kovalevsky poem is available here-- 
please read and enjoy!
      I have found that POEMS about mathematicians not only can serve to celebrate those lives but also provide a meaningful way to introduce these important people into math classes.  Here are several links to previously posted poems that speak of the lives of math-women:
   Sophie Germain (1776-1831)                      Florence Nightingale  (1820-1910)
   Amalie "Emmy" Noether  (1882-1935)      Grace Murray Hopper (1906 - 1988)

Readers may find more poems about special people by scrolling through postings or by using a blog-SEARCH.  Names available for SEARCH may be found in this document.  And here is a link to a blog-SEARCH using the terms "math women". 

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Haiku Poetry Day -- coming soon!

April 13, 2020, 9:44 am
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     My internet explorations find celebrations of Haiku Poetry Day described for both April 17 and April 18   -- my own recommendation is that you celebrate every day the beauty of language and meaning that can come when we thoughtfully limit our syllable-count.  I try to do that below.

Pandemic

Exponential growth:
small numbers doubling quickly--
a world upended!

Both mathematics and poetry honor concise language.  Here, from the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics is a wonderful collection  -- "Math in Seventeen Syllables:  A Folder of Mathematical Haiku," published in the January, 2018 issue.    ENJOY!  
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Inclusion-Exclusion -- the power of the CIRCLE!

April 15, 2020, 11:55 am
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On my mind today, this poem by U.S. poet Edwin Markham (1852-1940):

          Outwitted     by Edwin Markham

          He drew a circle that shut me out--
               Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
          But Love and I had the wit to win:
               We drew a circle that took him in!

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April 22 is EARTH DAY -- Remember the TREES

April 17, 2020, 7:15 am
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Can planting billions of trees save our planet?
Trees help cleanse the air by intercepting airborne particles, reducing heat, 
and absorbing pollutants such as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. 
Trees are sound barriers -- as effective as stone walls in stopping sound.

     Today this blog celebrates TREES via poetry by Australian visual artist and poet, Belinda Broughton -- her performance-poem "TREES" has been part of an exhibition, Solastalgia at Fabrik, in Lobethal, South Australia -- and here in this video she performs the poem in front of a drawing that she created with charcoal from her recently burnt home, tragically part of Australia's recent and widespread outbreak of wildfires.  
     I include below, some of the opening and closing lines of Broughton's poem;  after these, I offer a link to the print version of the complete poem.

     Edges     by Belinda Broughton

     Who will speak for the trees? Who     will speak for the trees?
     Who will speak for the forest, for that part
     of the natural world? Because it’s all nature, let’s face it,
     even this crass world with its concrete and steel,
     its plastic paint and polluted pavements.
     It   is   nature.
Read more »
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The Geometry of Love

April 20, 2020, 9:04 am
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     A journal that I love to browse is the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics -- and recent quarantining has been a bit like my youthful experience of being "snowed in" and thus having extra time for reading.  At the JHM site, I was drawn to this article by Robert Hass, "John Cheever's Story 'The Geometry of Love'."  Before reading Haas' analysis, I sought to read the original story --available here (a pdf-file of its appearance in 1966 in The Saturday Evening Post).
      Short story writer John Cheever (1912-1982) and JHM author Robert Haas explore (with some humor) the question: how can Euclidean geometry help us find our ideal world of truth and happiness.  Read and enjoy!
 
     Since this is a math-poetry blog, I add a tiny rhyme of mine:

               The Geometry of Love

               I like the intersection line
               that your plane makes with mine.

For lots and lots more fiction-with-mathematics, visit this wonderful website maintained by Alex Kasman of the College of Charleston.  
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Considering my Point of View

April 22, 2020, 7:40 am
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       Today, on Earth Day, I am listening to news of the COVID-19 pandemic and wondering how to interpret what I hear . ..  

"Do you see the center . . . " by William Elliott

Elliott's poem appears on my shelf in the math-poetry anthology,  Against Infinity, edited by Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp (Primary Press, 1979).

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National Poem-in-your-Pocket Day -- April 30, 2020

April 27, 2020, 9:00 am
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     The following stanza by  award-winning children's author,  Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, (1914-2000), has led to an annual celebration in US schools of "Poem-in-your-Pocket" Day:

          Keep a poem in your pocket 
          and a picture in your head     
          and you'll never feel lonely
          at night when you're in bed.  

This year's Poem-in-your-Pocket Day will be celebrated on Thursday, April 30.  Here is a link to  "Counting and Math Rhymes" -- a website that offers a variety of choices for young people's pockets.  My own pocket -- and my mind, during these days of pandemic confusion -- will be holding lines from Carl Sandburg's "Arithmetic":
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Poetry and Math -- online audio -- 2020 census, etc

April 30, 2020, 8:29 am
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     Today (with poems in our pockets) we celebrate the final day of National Poetry Month and National Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month and I offer to you two math-poetry links to browse and enjoy.
     This first link leads to an NPR Code Switch podcast that concerns the 2020 census -- "When Poets Decide Who Counts" -- and five poets-and-poems are presented in a discussion of the fairness/unfairness of the census-count.  (One of the poems, "American Arithmetic" by Natalie Diaz, has also appeared in this blog.)
     This next link leads to another podcast  -- this one entitled "What's math got to do with poetry?" and a creation of science writer Stephen Ornes, in his blog, Calculated. (Thank you, Stephen, for inviting me to participate in your podcast and to read several poems.)

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Remembering Eavan Boland, Grace Hopper

May 4, 2020, 7:47 am
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     Irish poet Eavan Boland (1944-2020) died last week and news of her death has caused me to look back and remember.  In this year in which the US celebrates 100 years of women's suffrage, I am reminded of this poem in the Irish Times in which Boland celebrated 100 years of Irish women's suffrage, a poem entitled "Our future will become the past of other women."  Here is a brief excerpt from that poem:
                         A hundred years ago a woman’s vote
                         Becoming law became the right
                         Of Irish women. We remember them
                         As we celebrate this freedom.

One of my favorite of Boland's poems is her tribute to another master of language, Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1988) -- Hopper was a computer pioneer and a navy rear admiral.  Here is the opening stanza of Boland's poem:
Read more »
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Squaring the circle . . . or not . . .

May 7, 2020, 9:01 am
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     Start with a CIRCLE -- is it possible, using only a straightedge and compass, to construct a SQUARE with the same area as the starting circle?  This problem, posed by ancient geometers, was long believed to be impossible, but not proven so until 1882 when Ferdinand von Lindemann proved thatπ is transcendental.
     Freelance editor and math-geek Sam Hartburn offers at her website a fun-to-read poem on this topic.  The first stanza is offered below, followed by a link to the full poem text -- and a recording. 

 (not) Squaring the Circle     by Sam Hartburn

         So I had this circle, but I wanted a square
          Don’t ask why, that’s my affair
          The crucial aspect of this little game
          Is that the area should stay the same
          Ruler and compass are the tools to use
          It’s been proven impossible, but that’s no excuse
          Many have tried it, but hey, I’m me
          I’m bound to find something that they couldn’t see

          So, here we go
                . . .
Hartburn's complete poem (and recording) may be found here.
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Geometry of a Shadow

May 11, 2020, 8:04 am
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     This morning while exercising I listened to an old CD that had been stored with materials I used when involved with the The Children's Museum(in Bloomsburg, PA).  The recording included selections from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) and as I listened to "My Shadow" I connected it with my blog -- a poem of geometry and mappings.  Here it is; enjoy!

     My Shadow    by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
 
     I HAVE a little shadow that goes in and out with me,   
     And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.   
     He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;   
     And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. 
Read more »
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What would I do without NUMBERS?

May 13, 2020, 6:50 am
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     Sometimes familiar things that are very important are taken for granted.  Many of us do that with numbers . . . California poet and artist Mary Fabilli (1914-2011) considered their importance in the following thoughtful poem:

     Numbers    by Mary Fabilli

     What would I do
     without numbers?
     A 7 there and a 3 here,
     days in a month
     months in a year
     AD and BC
     and all such symbols

     the track of time
Read more »
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A rhyme about a prime

May 15, 2020, 6:32 am
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     Tomorrow, May 16, is the birthday of Pafnuty Chebyshev (1821-1894), who was one of the founders of Russian mathematics and the first to prove (in 1850) a conjecture (about positive integers) made in 1845 by French mathematician Joseph Bertrand (1822-1900) and sometimes referred to as Bertrand's postulate.  This rhyming couplet celebrates that conjecture:

               Chebyshev said, and I'll say it again:
               There's always a prime between n and 2n.

Thanks to Evelyn Lamb's AMS Page-A-Day Calendar for its May 10 alert to the info above.
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Doubling and redoubling . ..

May 18, 2020, 8:47 am
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     The mathematics of repeated doubling and concerns about Covid-19 have led Virginia dentist and poet Eric Forsbergh to write "A Fable" (offered below): 

     Fable     by Eric Forsbergh

     A child seeks the raja out.

     A grain of rice is held out on the child’s fingertip.
     The child seeks to live, someday to reproduce.

     “I ask this. One grain doubled,
     doubled again, on a chessboard every square.”
     The raja’s not alarmed.
     He sends a soldier out to get a loaded scoop.
     “Maybe a small pail.” he calls out as an afterthought.
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Links to mathy poems . . .

May 20, 2020, 7:46 am
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     The Annual Bridges Math-Arts Conference will not be meeting this year but mathematician Sarah Glaz has arranged for lots of math-poetic activity online -- go here and scroll down for links to poetry-presentations that she has arranged.  
     Glaz has gathered a Bridges 2020 Poetry Anthology (not yet published) that contains five of my mathy poems.  I read aloud two of them -- 

"Love Mathematics" and "A Baker's Dozen" -- here on YouTube.  

Thanks to my neighbor, Mark Willey, for help with the YouTube recording!

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Counting . . . and more counting . . .

May 25, 2020, 7:54 am
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     Poet and retired math teacher and poetry editor (talkingwriting.com) Carol Dorf has been staying connected during the covid-19 pandemic by sharing poems.  Many of her emailed shares are works I know, but the item below came as new -- a mathy poem by David Ignatow (1914-1997) from his collection Against the Evidence: Selected Poems 1934-1994. (Wesleyan University Press, 1993).  Consider, with Ignatow, what is finite?  what is countable?

Information     by David Ignatow  
Read more »
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THE STORY OF MATHEMATICS -- in a poem

May 27, 2020, 7:48 am
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     A mathy poem that I have learned about from Carol Dorf (poet and retired math teacher and poetry editor at talkingwriting.com) is "The Story of Mathematics" by poet and teacher Sarah Dickenson Snyder.  Offered below, "The Story of Mathematics" first appeared in the Spring 2020 issue of 300 Days of Sun -- it is a poem for which I have needed (and enjoyed) the challenge of several re-readings, both silent and aloud, to take it in.

     The Story of Mathematics   by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

    ​It starts with a shell –
     its curve and shine,

     the way a line peaks.
     It starts with a star

     and the arc
     between bone and light.
Read more »
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Which permutation of lines yields the best poem?

May 31, 2020, 10:11 am
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     A fascinating article about poet Jericho Brown (by Allison Glock in Garden and Gun magazine) reminded me of the vital role of line-arrangement in creating a poem.  (Emory University professor Brown has won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection The Tradition  (Copper Canyon Press, 2019)).
      Glock's article, "Jericho Rising," tells of various factors that have influenced Brown's poetry and describes his process of arranging lines, typed on separate strips of paper, into poems.  Three of the lines shown in the article are:

       What is the history of the wound? 
  We'll never see their faces or know their names.      
       And a grief so thick you could touch it.
Read more »
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Women in Theory -- Math to Give

June 3, 2020, 1:51 pm
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     The June, 2020 Conference of Women in Theory (of Computer Science) has been postponed to next year.  But these energetic mathy women got together virtually and performed a song.  I offer below the opening stanzas;  for the performance and complete lyrics, follow this link to YouTube.

      I Will Survive  (lyrics by Avi Wigderson (Princeton, IAS)

      At first I was afraid, I was petrified
      I worried I could never fit this proof on just one slide
      But then I spent so many nights 
                     thinking why it is so long
      And I grew strong
      And learned exactly what went wrong

      A problem wor-thy, of attack
      Just proves its worth by vigorously fighting back
      I should have used error correction, 
                     should have sampled yet again
      I should have stayed the course 
                     and found there is so much that I can gain
         . . .
For the YouTube version (with lyrics) of the complete song (8 stanzas), go here.

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