Essay by Elizabeth Langosy
My Cram Course in Math Poetry
Don't miss Why Poets Sometimes Think in Numbers, Carol Dorf's introduction to math poetry in this spotlight.
As nonmathematicians, my daughter Zoe and I weren't sure what to expect when we showed up for "A Reading of Poetry with Mathematics" at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston on January 6, 2012. I had agreed to read three math poems by TW Poetry Editor Carol Dorf, who was participating in another conference held on the West Coast the same weekend.
As we made our way through the crowds, Zoe and I noticed the preponderance of argyle sweaters and eyeglasses worn by the erudite conference attendees. Once we arrived at the reading, however, we found that both the poets and the audience had a more Bohemian mien.
When we decided to feature math poems in TW, I'd never heard of the genre and naively envisioned it as words fashioned into geometric shapes or complicated numerical reasoning behind an arrangement of stanzas. I now know that math poetry is simply poetry that includes an aspect of mathematics, either as its subject or as a metaphor.
This can be as basic as arithmetic (think of the words to the pop song "One Is the Loneliest Number"), as playful as geometry (yes, poets do experiment with shapes), or as abstract and formidable as my wildest imaginings (isomorphism of finite p-groups, anyone?). I had guessed that the poems presented at a math conference would tend toward the latter. But when the reading began, we were enchanted by the wide variety of offerings by mathematicians who also write poetry and by poets who sometimes write about math.
Henry Baker, a 19-year-old mathematics student at Bristol University in the U.K. was virtually represented through the screening of 59, a short film in which he recites his poem about love and prime numbers as its storyline is charmingly enacted.
One of Judith Johnson's poems featured the Blob complaining to its mother about its lack of physical boundaries. Jaqueline Lapidus wrote about a man who came between two lovers, causing two to go to up to three and then down to one. Several poets read pieces influenced by Escher's tessellated images.
I've been to many poetry readings, and they all had in common the self-absorption of the reader and the audience that appeared to be standing by as each waited for his or her turn at the mic. At the math poetry reading, however, the poets seemed genuinely connected to the audience members, who responded in turn, interacting with the poets through murmured assent, admiration, or amusement.
I was delighted by the enthusiastic response to my reading of Carol's poems, one of which is presented in this issue. It was fun, rather than stressful, to read to this engaged group of poets and mathematicians.
At one point, JoAnne Growney (an organizer of the reading as well as another of the poets featured in this issue) read a series of humorous works prepared for a previous gathering of math poets. One of them was a riff on Poe's "The Raven," with only a single line mirroring the original.
When JoAnne said, "You all know the final line," the entire audience exuberantly joined in: "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore!'"
What a pleasure to see such enjoyment in the use of language. Suffice it to say that I am now a fan of math poetry.
Art Information
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“Iron and Glass” © Lois Shelden; used by permission
Elizabeth Langosy is the executive editor of Talking Writing. She admits to being a math whiz in high school, although her math career ended there.
“In Still Life, Alexander ultimately realizes the color he’s settled on for the plums is “the dark center of some new and vigorously burgeoning human bruise,” although in fact the fruit is neither bruised nor human. With that, the quest for precision fails.” —A.S. Byatt's Plums
