Sunday, March 16, 2014

March 21 Splendid Wake Event: Black Intellectual History, Wounded Warrior Project, Spoken Word


A SPLENDID WAKE: PART II: UNUSUAL LITERARY PROGRAM TO TAKE PLACE MARCH 21, 6:30-8:00 P.M., Gelman Library, George Washington University, Suite 702, 2130 H Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. Free and Open to the Public!

"In the Shadow of the Capitol" is just one of three unusual literary topics to be discussed March 21 at George Washington University’s Gelman Library.

Part of "A Splendid Wake," a project to document poets and literary movements in the nation’s capital from 1900-present, poets and panelists will report on experimental contemporary poetry, warrior poetry projects, and on D.C’'s African-American intellectual/creative activity during years of segregation in Washington.


Monday, March 3, 2014

DC poets of mathematics and science

Some remarks from JoAnne Growney
http: poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com  

Nine years ago I moved to Silver Spring from small-town Pennsylvania.  My careful knowledge of particular poets in the Washington, DC area began to flourish more than twenty years earlier when -- as a professor of mathematics at a Pennsylvania university -- I began to notice and collect poems related to math and science. 

But, before more history, let me focus on a recent event.  On January 17, 2014, DC poets E. Laura Golberg, Katharine Merow, Myra Sklarew , and Mary-Sherman Willis joined me and other mathy poets in a "Reading of Poetry with Mathematics" at a national mathematics conference in Baltimore.  Despite this poetic proclamation from Archibald MacLeish:


          A poem should not mean . . .
         
those of us present at the reading -- focusing on poetry connected to the subject matter of mathematics -- felt the special magic generated when worlds collide. (The online free-access Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, sponsor of the reading, is a place to find an ongoing and increasing source of such integrated work.)

And now I return to the early history of my engagement with DC-area poets of mathematics and science: