Add and subtract to get . . . a minimalist poem

Thinking today of poet Bob Grumman (1941-2015) with special gratitude for the way he expanded my poetic horizons.  For example, he introduced me to this addition-subtraction minimalist poem by LeRoy Gorman -- called "the day":

                          un + s = up;
                          up - s = un.

More information about Gorman and several more poetry samples are available here.

Places to go, ideas to see

     Today I want to suggest interesting internet locations to visit.
     This first link leads to an hour-long documentary on YouTube on the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920). Prepared in 1987 for the commemoration of Ramanujan's 100th birthday, this documentary honors a mathematical genius from whom we continue, still in the 21st century, to learn.  Ramanujan was celebrated earlier in this blog, on 18 February 2011, with a poem by Jonathan Holden.
     I want also to direct you to a Scientific American Guest Blog posting on 9 February 2013 by Bob Grumman.  Since his first SA Guest Blog posting on 28 July 2012, Grumman has been offering, about once a month, his unique views on the intersections of mathematics and poetry.  Primarily interested in visual poetry, Grumman features his own work along with that of numerous other poets -- including e e cummings, Betsy Franco, Scott Helmes, Gerald Kaufman. and Kaz Maslanka.  The 9 February 2013 posting features work by California activist Karl Kempton -- and I offer a sample below to encourage you to visit the SA blog for more of Karl's interesting work. 

Surprise me!

Bob Grumman, a mathy poet whose work has appeared in this blog (21 June 2010) and a blogger, has recently been invited to write a Guest Blog for Scientific American.  Here is a wonderful sentence about poetry that I have taken from his posting on 22 September 2012 (the third of his guest postings).

           And I claim that nothing is more important for a poet 
               than finding new ways to surprise people with the familiar.

Visit Grumman's Guest Blog to find his illustrations of poetic surprise; after a pair of visual poems, ten x ten and Ellipsonnet, he discusses a poem by Louis Zukovsky in which the poet describes his poetics using the integral sign from calculus:

∫ 

Zukovsky's definite integral (which Grumman tells us is carefully copyright-protected) has the lower limit "speech" and upper limit "music." 

Poetry with mathematical symbols

On the internet and elsewhere a variety of viewpoints are expressed about the criteria poetry should satisfy to be "mathematical." Today I want to introduce samples and links for three writers:   Bob Grumman (Florida), Gregory Vincent St Thomasino (New York), and Kaz Maslanka (California).  Grumman and Maslanka write poems with a strong visual element and, as the blogs and comments for all three testify, they differ in their views of what may be properly called "mathematical" poetry..