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:
