A couple of months ago (here in my June 8 posting) I offered a link to information about poetry to be offered at the 2022 Bridges Math-Arts Conference -- held last week in Finland. This link leads to a series of YouTube recordings of Bridges mathy poems and this link (at the website of organizer Sarah Glaz) offers written information about Bridges poets as well as sample poems. Visit, read and listen, learn, enjoy!
One of my poems that is included on the Bridges poetry site is entitled "Three-fold Asylum" -- a poem that explores various roles of the number three. I offer it below:
Three-fold Asylum by JoAnne Growney
Third door left on level three, my room
holds steel furniture—its items three:
double platform bed (for dreamless sleep),
square corner desk with three-castered chair
that spins, loops, and glides from the barred door
to the dark window that sees nowhere.
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 8:35 PMNo comments: 
Labels: 2022, 2023, Bridges Conference
Years ago I wrote this poem -- recently I have rediscovered it and, once again, pondered the role of time in my life. Here, from the 1980's is "Expectations" -- a poem that appears in my collection, Intersections (Kadet Press, 1993).
Expectations by JoAnne Growney
Don't let mathematics
teach you to expect two
to be more than one.
It's sad but true that two
can get too near,
can interfere,
can reduce each other
to less than one,
to less than half.
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 11:09 AMNo comments:
Labels: birthday, expectation, time
Today I share a poem by poet A. Van Jordan that takes math-science terminology and mixes it into personal situations -- and offers varied ideas to consider. Born in Ohio, Van Jordan became interested in poetry while studying for a masters degree at Howard University and attending readings in Washington, DC.
Einstein Defining Special Relativity by A. Van Jordan
INSERT SHOT: Einstein’s notebook 1905—DAY 1: a theory that is based on two postulates (a) that the speed of light in all inertial frames is constant, independent of the source or observer. As in, the speed of light emitted from the truth is the same as that of a lie coming from the lamp of a face aglow with trust, and (b) the laws of physics are not changed in all inertial systems, which leads to the equivalence of mass and energy and of change in mass, dimension, and time; with increased velocity, space is compressed in the direction of the motion and time slows down. As when I look at Mileva, it’s as if I’ve been in a space ship traveling as close to the speed of light as possible, and when I return, years later, I’m younger than when I began the journey, but she’s grown older, less patient. Even a small amount of mass can be converted into enormous amounts of energy: I’ll whisper her name in her ear, and the blood flows like a mallet running across vibes. But another woman shoots me a flirting glance, and what was inseparable is now cleaved in two.
The poem above was found here at poets.org along with other samples of Van Jordan's work. His poem "Quantum Lyrics" was included in this blog (at this link) back in February 2019.
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 11:19 AMNo comments:
Labels: A. Van Jordan, Albert Einstein
When working with students in poetry workshops I often ask them to write to satisfy a constraint -- perhaps a Fib or a square poem -- in order to help them focus their thoughts. This morning -- in the middle of a heat wave -- I focused my thoughts squarely on my growing concerns about climate.
Steamy weather. I count
the degrees. I count on
air conditioning. But
my cooling system adds
to global warming. What
is the right thing to do?
Here is a link to previous postings in this blog that offer climate concerns.
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 10:13 AMNo comments:
Labels: climate change, square poem
Tomorrow (April 22) is Earth Day. This worried poem is structured using
The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.
(Some explanatory notes follow the poem.)
 |
| "We Are the Final Ones" by JoAnne Growney |
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 10:03 AMNo comments:
Labels: Carl Andre, Earth day, Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic
Mathematics Teacher Lisa Winer (St Andrews School, Boca Raton, FL) enjoys giving her students new sorts of learning experiences. In her eatplaymath blog, I found the results of her suggestion that students submit mathy poems to their school literary magazine. I offer below the first of the poems in the collection that Winer offers; go here to read more -- AND, consider a poetry project for math students that YOU know!
Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset
I am bad at math (read top to bottom)
I am horrible at math
So I'll never say that
I can get an A.
But, if I try my hardest
I will fail.
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 10:16 AMNo comments:
Labels: Lisa Winer
A limerick is a five-line rhyming verse, usually humorous, often earthy and rude. Various limericks have appeared previous postings in this blog -- this one comes from the online journal Parody -- Poetry for the world as it really isn't.
I found Norwood's sexist limerick here in a July 2013 posting in Parody. Here is a link to previous postings in this blog of mathy limericks.
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 11:09 AMNo comments:
Labels: parody, Rick Norwood
Using syllable counts to help to craft poems has been with us since the sonnet and this blog has often presented square poems and Fibs and Pilish and . .. and today we again focus on the digits of π. On Pi-Day (3/14) Australia's Cosmos Magazine opened a Pi-Ku Contest which asks for brief Haiku-like poems whose syllables-per-line are counted by the first six digit of the decimal value of π. (Contest information is available at this link.) Entries must be submitted by 2Pi-Day, or 6/28.
Here are two mathy samples from the Cosmos contest-information site:
Learning STEM
is
necessary.
Do
remember science,
technology, engineering, maths. by Jennifer Chalmers
To say safe,
Keep
an area
of
Pi times one point five
metres squared around yourself always. by Lauren Fuge
Other poetry forms shaped by the digits of π include π-ku and Pilish.
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 9:57 AMNo comments:
Labels: Cosmos, Jennifer Chalmers, Lauren Fuge, Pi-ku
Madhur Anand is a poet and a professor of ecology and environmental science at the University of Guelph in Ontario – her work has been noted here in earlier postings in this blog -- and today I want to introduce readers to her memoir, This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart (Penguin Random House, 2020).
On the opening page we find these poetic lines:
Biexponential Function by Madhur Anand
The
sharpest
memory
I have of a
book from my
childhood is one
entitled I Know What
I Like. I remember the
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 9:52 AMNo comments:
Labels: Madhur Anand
The Annual BRIDGES Math-Art Conference will be virtual again this year (August 2-6, 2021) and mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz has developed an online array of poets and poetry to be part of this program. Bios and sample poems are already available here.
Participating poets include: Marian Christie, Carol Dorf, Susan Gerofsky. David Greenslade, Emily Grosholz, JoAnne Growney, Lisa Lajeunesse, Marco Lucchesi, Mike Naylor, Osmo Pekonen, Tom Petsinis, Eveline Pye, Any Uyematsu, Ursula Whitcher -- and, also, these open-mike participants: Susana Sulic, S. Brackert Robertson, Stephen Wren, Marion Deutsche Cohen, Connie Tetteborn, Jacob Richardson, Robin Chapman. Stephanie Strickland. (Bios and sample poems here.)
Here is a sample from the BRIDGES poetry program:
Descartes by Eeva-Liisa Manner
translated from the Finnish by Osmo Pekonen
I thought, but I wasn't.
I said animals were machines.
I had lost everything but my reason.
Posted by JoAnne Growneyat 10:23 AMNo comments:
Labels: Eeva-Liisa Manner, Osmo Pekonen
Growney, J, (2021, April 22), Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics ,Blogspot, Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics
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