Multiplied by Rain

     There are many mathematical terms that are used in daily life -- not only multiplied and divided and negative but also closure and identity and field and commute -- and it is fun for me, a math person, to see poets use such terms in new and thoughtful ways.
     Poet Jane Hirschfield weaves words into fine tapestries that give us new dimensions of meaning.  The Table of Contents of her new book, The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), is scattered with mathematical terms -- we find zero, plus, subtraction,  and the final title, "Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain."  This poem first appeared in Poetry (2012) and is available at the Poetry Foundation website along with more than thirty additional Hirshfield poems.

Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain   by Jane Hirshfield

     Lie down, you are horizontal.
     Stand up, you are not. 

"My Proteins"

The mysteries of science are sometimes explored in poems and, in this vein, I was delighted to find "My Proteins" by Jane Hirshfield (a poet whose work I like and admire) on page 56 of the September 16, 2013 issue of The New Yorker.   As she explores the riddles of who she is and where she came from, she has these lines-with-numbers (stanzas 3 and 4):

from My Proteins      by Jane Hirshfield

     Ninety percent of my cells, they have discovered,
     are not my own person,
     they are other beings inside me.

     As ninety-six percent of my life is not my life.
          . . .

Look for the entire poem; and enjoy! 
Another exploration of what the self is and isn't may be found in Hirshfield's "My Skeleton"  -- today's Poem-A-Day selection from Poets.org.  Jane Hirshfield's poem "Mathematics" is available here in my post for 23 June 2010.

The important 1 (multiplicative identity)

On this day 12/12/12, I have heard much media discussion concerning coincidences of number.  My own thoughts continue to examine the multiple meanings of "identity."  Here is a lovely tanka by Izumi Shikibu (b 976?) that focuses on the importance of one:

       This heart,
       longing for you,
       breaks
       to a thousand pieces--
       I wouldn't lose one.

From The Ink Dark Moon:  Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan (Vintage Books, 1990), translated by Jane Hirshfeld with Mariko Aratani. 

Mathematics, like poetry, is ART

Doing mathematics is often misunderstood as primarily computation--an error that seems equivalent to seeing poetry writing as primarily a spelling exercise.