Monday, March 19, 2018

Math and poetry -- shout out the connection!

    Recently I came across a fun-to-read posting here in the blog "math for grownups" about connections between math and poetry -- blogger Laura Laing is a freelance writer who was a math major  (here is her personal webpage) and she offers strongly positive remarks about poetry and math and women and    . .
    Following the theme of positive connections, I offer a sample of work by Theoni Pappas, taken from a recently-republished collection math talk:  mathematical ideas in poems for two voices (Wide World Publishing, 2014).  Here are the opening lines of the first poem of the collection -- it is fittingly entitled "Mathematics."  

From "Mathematics"--a poem for two voices--by Theoni Pappas

The "Forward" for Pappas' collection of poems includes the following key remarks:
          Learning takes place via all our senses . . . Mathematical ideas can be learned through art, reading, conversations, lectures.  Therefore, why not link mathematical ideas and poetic dialogues? . . . These poems are meant to be read aloud . .. lines on the same horizontal are meant to be read simultaneously.

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