Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics [Hardcover]

Sarah Glaz (Editor), Joanne Growney (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1568813414 | ISBN-13: 978-1568813417

What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart? So wrote the American mathematician and educator David Eugene Smith. In a similar vein, the German mathematician Karl Weierstrass declared, A mathematician who is not at the same time something of a poet will never be a full mathematician. Most mathematicians will know what they meant. But what do professional poets think of mathematics? In this delightful collection, the editors present the view of the same terrain the connections between mathematics and poetry from the other side of the equation: the poets. Now is your chance to see if the equation balances.
Keith Devlin, mathematician, Stanford University, author of The Math Gene, The Math Instinct, and The Language of Mathematics

This poetry anthology contains over 150 poems-each of which has a strong link to mathematics in content, form, or imagery. The collection is international, including translations of major poetic voices, and its time spread is at least 3000 years-from a fragment of The Song of Songs by King Solomon, circa 1000 BC, to contemporary American poetry. The common theme of the poems in this volume is love, interpreted with broad universality. The poems engage a variety of mathematical topics-from counting to commutative rings, and from the intermediate value theorem to infinity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A delightful juxtaposition of that which is supremely precise and that which is supremely imprecise and all of it deeply human. ----Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams

If you are fond of mathematics and believe that love is the sweet mystery of life, you'll find this anthology an endless source of pleasure. Edited by two mathematicians who also happen to be poets, this fine collection includes pieces from many famous poets. ----Martin Gardner, author of Mathematical Games

Poetry may begin, as Yeats said, in the 'foul rag and bone shop of the heart', but it is completed with the music of the spheres. What a wonderful collection Strange Attractors is, offering readers the ones who know mathematics is a form of poetry and the ones who don t a place to find, as Emily Dickinson says, what 'eludes the finding out.' --Robert Hass, author of Time and Materials

About the Author

Sarah Glaz is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Connecticut and author of Commutative Coherent Rings (Springer, 1989; reissued in 2006) and other books and articles in commutative algebra. She also has a lifelong interest in poetry, served on the editorial board of Ibis Review, a Literary Magazine, and published several of her poems and translations in periodicals.

Poet JoAnne Growney was a professor of mathematics at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania for a number of years and during this time she began to write and to collect poetry with mathematical theme or structure. She now lives in Silver Spring, MD where she continues her writing and is involved in DC-area poetry activities.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: AK Peters (November 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568813414
• ISBN-13: 978-1568813417
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #847,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Strange Attractors" = Math + Love, December 13, 2008

By 

Thomas Jennings "enneanine" (Silver Spring, MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (Hardcover)

A friend of mine, with similar interests, wrote this review--worthy of sharing:

A new book, edited by a pair of college math professors, offers "poems of love and mathematics" that provide enjoyable reading to those of us more familiar with verse than with Venn diagrams.

Even though the kind nuns made me memorize the multiplication tables, I later became gagged by geometry, confused by chaos theory, and flummoxed by Fibonacci sums. Higher math, and its lesser cousins, never made sense, so I found an easy chair and a pile of poetry books that I used to fend off calculus, statistics, and other mysterious studies.

To my surprise, this anthology demonstrates that fans of math can also have fun with words. John McClellan wrote: "A lady of 80 named Gertie/ Had a boyfriend of 60 named Bertie./ She told him emphatically/ That viewed mathematically/ By modulo 50 she's 30." The poet was a lithographer with an interest in "recreational math," according to the useful Contributor's Notes.

Poems can also offer music to the ears. Sarah Glaz, co-editor, reports on "Late Afternoon in the Workshop on Commutative Rings" about being "Inebriated in Pienza and Montepulciano/Cortona Firenze and San Gimignano." Read it aloud and hear for yourself!

Other poems in this varied collection treat more serious subjects. In "My Dance is Mathematics," JoAnne Growney, co-editor, observes that "If a woman's dance is mathematics,/ She dances alone."

Rather than reading alone, owners of this book are likely to share discoveries ranging from King Solomon to Shel Silverstein, from Catullus to Lewis Carroll, and from Dante to Rita Dove. Curious students will also find short biographical sketches of the mathematicians mentioned in the poems. Many readers might dance alone, delighted at the variety, and grateful to the thoughtful and thorough editors.

Thanks, Denny!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful anthology!, December 5, 2008

By 

claudine - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (Hardcover)

I am not a mathematician nor a poet but I loved this book. It combines whimsy, funny poems with others that are more 'serious' or romantic. I enjoyed comparing poems written centuries ago with comtemporary ones. My favorite poems are 'God Loves a Curve' by Edward Chipman, 'Love Story' by Sarah Glaz and 'A Lady of 80' by John McClellan. The anthology is well organized by love categories and the index is easy to use. The Contributors' Notes also provide useful information on each of the poet included. I recommend this book to all lovers of poetry with a mathematical bent for the sensitivity and humor of the work chosen by the editors.

5.0 out of 5 stars Mathematics expressed in textual poetry, April 23, 2010

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (Hardcover)

To mathematicians, the expressions of mathematics are poetic in nature and expressive of thought. Using only a few symbols, it is possible to express the movements of galaxies, stars, planets and the smallest spacecraft. The secrets of how the universe operates on the physical level are expressed in mathematics, understanding the equations causes you to simultaneously burst with pride and kneel down in humility. There is no greater joy to a mathematician than when you prove and understand a theorem for the first time.
These poems express some of these same aspects of pride, humility and emotional joy; only they are expressed in textual poetry that has a mathematical theme. Some are classic poems by the masters with little in the way of mathematics, for example there are works by Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and William Carlos Williams. While items in that set of poems is always a joy to read that of course is not the main attractor found in this book. For that position is firmly held by the material that has a true mathematical theme, where writers intelligently and thoughtfully combine the explanatory beauty of mathematics with the emotional beauty of poetry.
As the song states, "Love is a many-splendored thing." In this book mathematics is splendored in many ways that demonstrate the breadth and depth of interest and joy that it presents to those who love it.

Published in "Journal of Recreational Mathematics" reprinted with permission.