This month, Math, Science, & Technology are music to our ears. Work both sides of your brain and listen to the collection of songs we’ve chosen just for you. Included are old favorites in our playlist like Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science” and “Weird Science” by Oingo Boingo. We also mixed in some fun bands you may not have heard before like The Dandy Warhols and You Had Me at Six. There are plenty of possibilities to find your favorite new jam. (Watch for a couple of comedians, too. And we apologize ahead of time for two lapses of polite language, which seems to be a thing sometimes in comedy acts.) In any case, bring out your pocket protector, press play, and get geeky with us!
British poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge once corresponded,
I have often been surprised, that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few…
His letter included a poem that touches on a geometric proposition from Book I of the Greek mathematician Euclid’s Elements. Coleridge mentioned that the poem was just a sample of a more ambitious project which intended to reproduce all of Euclid’s “Elements” in a series of Pindaric odes. Unfortunately, it never came to fruition. Here is an excerpt from his poem, “A Mathematical Problem:”
This is now–this was erst,
Proposition the first–and Problem the first.
On a given finite Line
Which must no way incline;
To describe an equi–
–lateral Tri–
–A, N, G, L, E.
Now let A. B.
Be the given line
Which must no way incline;
The great Mathematician
Makes this Requisition,
That we describe an Equi–
–lateral Tri–
–angle on it:
Aid us, Reason–aid us, Wit!
From the centre A. at the distance A. B.
Describe the circle B. C. D.
At the distance B. A. from B. the centre
The round A. C. E. to describe boldly venture.
(Third Postulate see.)
And from the point C.
In which the circles make a pother
Cutting and slashing one another,
Bid the straight lines a journeying go,
C. A., C. B. those lines will show.
To the points, which by A. B. are reckon’d,
And postulate the second
For Authority ye know.
A. B. C.
Triumphant shall be
An Equilateral Triangle,
Not Peter Pindar carp, not Zoilus can wrangle.
—by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Try It
Write a poem that honors the complex beauty of mathematics. It could be a math problem you remember from childhood, gratitude for a calculator, or the mind-boggling magnificence of geometry, calculus, or discrete math. Celebrate math with a bit of left-brained poetry. Share your poem with us in the comments section below.
Featured Poem
Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here is a poem about a childhood game we enjoyed from Andrew:
British Bulldogs
British Bulldogs, the rough and tumble sport.
The teachers forbade it, said it
Was dangerous to the likes of us.
Here is how to play it, so that you
May better ignore them.
First find a circle, any round
Or even square shaped playing ground.
One in the middle, to divide
Between the two opposing sides.
Beware the growling foe! Pass him by,
And if you’re lucky you will survive
To pass through to the other side,
Where in the shadows, you – can hide.
But if he catches you! Do not go quiet!
Let your brethren know you did not
Go easy to meet the foe.
For you’re like him now, and if you had
Honour, you’d bid your former friends beware
That you are coming.
—by Andrew H.
Photo by Tom Brown. Creative Commons via Flickr.
Browse more writing prompts
Browse poetry teaching resources
How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.
“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland
- Poetry Prompt: Misunderstood Lion - March 19, 2018
- Animate: Lions & Lambs Poetry Prompt - March 12, 2018
- Poetry Prompt: Behind the Velvet Rope - February 26, 2018
Rick Maxson says
Parallax
How to see,
that is the problem.
One is inclusive,
the first and last
of everything. One,
though many, remains so,
but requires a place
from which to know this.
Strangely, one then,
by necessity, makes two,
else one cannot be
known as one.
One is a sound
inside your head,
a single sound you think
you hear. Write it down
and it is two, combine it
with a hundred more
and it is one again,
like words on a page,
like this poem.
Heather Eure says
Clever, Rick! You’ve altered my view of parallaxis. Haha. Get it? Get it?
Zack Smith says
Strings (a poem about string theory)
If we found out the world
Was made of something else
Than we thought it was
Originally
The scientists agree
Definitely
There’s something we don’t see
They say everything
Is composed of sort of strings
Trembling endlessly
From unseen energy
Lifting from nothing
A volume of relief
A measure of belief
Wouldn’t that change everything?
Wouldn’t that make history
Seem like a story that
Drops you in unexpectedly?
Wouldn’t that change everything?
If you’ve heard a thing
You can’t explain
Echoes from the world
Meant to be
And whatever it was
Was beautiful and true
And everlasting, too
What if we were fashioned
Intimately
By a master artisan
Of classical strings
Our bodies and our souls
Resonating
With music we can’t read
Wouldn’t that change everything?
Wouldn’t that change everything?
From the rain pour’n down on our heads
To the soles of our muddy feet?
Wouldn’t that change everything?
Wouldn’t it change even me?
I suddenly feel I’m constructed of cellos and violins
I say I’ve got nothing to add to the words that I catch on the wind
But I hear a song in the sunrise that echoes within
Tell me: How is that possible? Where does it begin?
Some of us would say
There’s a melody
Carries us along
When we are weak
Helps us just to breathe
In moments we can’t speak
“That resonates with me”
JJ Reyes says
“I suddenly feel I’m constructed of cellos and violins”
Love it.
Andrew H says
Beautiful. I enjoyed it a lot.
Monica Sharman says
My son and I watched all of Arthur Benjamin’s lectures on The Great Courses:
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Mental-Courses-Teaching-Company/dp/1598037161
http://www.ted.com/speakers/arthur_benjamin
So I can’t help but write this month’s themed poem about that.
The Mathemagician
(Some phrases taken from Arthur Benjamin’s “The Secrets of Mental Math” from The Great Courses)
Numbers can dance.
If you don’t know the Art of Math,
learn his tricks—not so much magic
as the math of least resistance,
whether criss-cross, factoring, or
close-together method. Do quick math
the way poets write and their readers
read: left to right. Turn hard subtraction
to easy addition. Understand your complements,
two and three and four digits. Divide
and conquer, memorize one-seventh
have all the other sevenths down
by circling round repeated digits.
Take advantage of patterns,
how the cube begins and ends.
Pick any date in history and know
the day of the week. Turn digits
into sounds to keep a long number,
like a good story you will never forget.
Heather Eure says
I am fascinated by mental math, Monica. Love how you created a poem from the concept!
Heather Eure says
Thanks so much for sharing your poem with us, Zack. I see you’re in a folk-rock band. That’s one of my favorite sub-genres. I’ll be sure to check out some of your music. 🙂
Kelsey Royer says
Used to be that math was a mystery.
A complicated mass that unraveled itself just so.
Too neatly , in my mind,
I preferred the mess.
Til I left it behind and started counting
in an off-kilter , out the side of my mouth kind of way.
Then counting in groups, intuitively
making easy jumps from truth to truth
made simple the leap from math to intuition–
a stream of sense in a jumbled mess.
A mess of words, a mess or numbers,
does it really matter which?
Consider the improbability of your own existence,
the absolute unlikelihood that 1+1 could be simple.
But you’re here, you’re breathing
and you’ve scribbled the answer on your napkin just there.
Heather Eure says
Thanks Kelsey, what a great contribution.
Andrew H says
Physicists
I know a physicist, he knows the world.
I know of the ideal,
He the real.
We are not the same, he and I
For when I look into the sky
I see a question, banner, hope
While he sees light, refracted and subdued.
And when I hear a singer, aye I hear emotion
But he – the pity of the thing –
Sees only waves that soundless dance,
For waves are waves, and will not prance.
And yet… and yet, he sweeps the curtain back
Onto a universe beyond my gaze –
I see the surface, dream of the ideal
But he sees through that sort of haze.
Alas. I know a physicist;
He knows the real
While I labour
With the ideal.
Heather Eure says
It’s lovely to see science and poetry complement each other. Be sure to check out next week’s post, too! 🙂
Andrew H says
Of course! 😛
Glynn says
My Agony, My Ecstasy
Mathematics was a friend;
we’d stroll down corridors
together, not arm-in-arm
but chatting, distant comrades.
We sat next to each other
in classrooms, enduring the best
and the worst each school
had to offer,
until, trusting my friend,
I followed him into the surrealism
of geometry, a forest of crystal trees
with jagged edges tearing
at my flesh, my mind, and flashing
lights of what was claimed to be logic,
demanding tattoos of proof and theorem.
I escaped, bare and barely,
to the warm embrace of algebra
and its fraternal twin trigonometry,
my mind clearing, order restored
as I danced with equations, flirted
with sines and co-sines, still
shuddering at what I’d left behind.
Mathematics was my agony.
Mathematics was my ecstasy.
Heather Eure says
This is great. I can relate to the agony/ecstasy.
Maureen says
Law of Averages
If we could write our own vows, we would
forsake those 7 deadly sins, reimagine how
we’d cope with 1.862 children under 18
in a house with just 2,690 square feet
and 2.37 bathrooms. We’d have to add
1.6 dogs and 2.1 cats but forgo the garage
for the 1.9 vehicles we’d have for the 1.8
drivers in our household. Fair enough!
Would one of us earning $107,054 mean
the other could retire early after saving
8 times his salary? Because, the truth is,
nobody wants to be actuarially reduced,
especially if the one with the most toys
fails to win the MegaMillions Powerball.
Like everyone else in America, we’d need
a lot more to be more than comfortable,
never knowing when we’d likely be hit
by the proverbial bus tomorrow. Such is
the law of national averages that sticking
it out for 8.2 years would not be nearly long
enough for either of us to grow old together.
Prasanta says
What a great prompt! 🙂
Hymn of Matter
Energy cannot be created or destroyed
Only changed
From one form to another
Matter is fixed
Mortal pieces of dust
Molecules and atoms of
Breathing, beating souls
Return to the substance of his breath
DNA , unwrapped —
Strings stretch across universe
Connect planets –
The circumference– infinite
Pull strings taut
Listen to familiar haunting tune–
Our prayers, cries, groans
Tears and laughs
Listen to the hum of us
Songs of dust
Rising like incense
He inclines his head –
Amen.
Jennifer Dotson says
Easy as Pi
Numbers dance in your brain
with grace and speed.
They twirl and spin as they
switch partners from the
easy do-si-do of addition
and subtraction to the fast
tempo waltz in three-quarter
time of multiplication and
division.
Complex equations of
algebra
geometry
trigonometry and
calculus
are no match as you nimbly
sort the numbers into smaller
components to solve.
Oh, teach me how to two step.
Numbers stumble and bumble
about heavy-booted in my brain
as they fumble for the lights.
Is that the root of my attraction?
Like yin and yang?
That’s a simple fraction, you say,
two halves making one whole.