Link Roundup: Poetry and Math
Happy National Poetry Month! In the US, April is a time when people share odes to odes and explore the poetics of writing in all its forms. Poetry is a vast genre, found in everything from rhyming picture books to English class anthologies to rapid-fire lyricism. Its variety of expression means that it can be taught alongside many different subjects, including mathematics.
Poetry can be as much about algorithm as word choice. The existence of “poetic form” means that there is an algorithm to guide the poet — a set of steps that may be rendered as series of letters, like a limerick’s A-A-B-B-A rhyme scheme, or as lists of numbers, like haiku’s syllable count of 5–7–5. While not all poetry is constrained by such rules, there is a natural segue for educators looking to connect poems to math and computational thinking.
During National Poetry Month, students can discover the mathematical underpinnings of poetry or create their own algorithmic poems. They can read the work of poetic mathematicians and mathematical poets. More than anything else, they can see the beauty that underpins poetry — and what that beauty means to them and the poet.
The following links look at ways to discuss poetry with your students. Some links approach the subject from a broader perspective and some focus directly on the connections between poetry and mathematics. For poems addressing specific concepts, such as “mathematics,” you can search for the term on the Poetry Foundation’s website.
“Computer Analysis of Poetry” on Wolfram Community
This post, the first part of a two-part series, was initially shared as a part of the Wolfram Summer School in 2019 by Mark Greenberg. It is a prime example of the ways in which technology can be used to analyze poetry, quantifying poetic data in ways that may not readily be apparent to human eyes. For example, this post uses code to look at word stress, a feature of poetic patterns such as iambs, which in turn is a pattern oft employed by the Bard himself!
“Four Ways AI Can Help Teach Poetry” from TechNotes Blog by TCEA
AI remains a big, big topic in education. It is generally agreed that AI is great at mimicking rhetoric, owing to its pattern-matching abilities. For this reason, it can be useful for students learning about genre, including poetry! This blog post from the educational technology organization TCEA explores four ways that ChatGPT can help students learn about poetry, from poem analysis to poem generation.
“Golden Ratio Poetry: Mathematical Poetry According to Φ” from Math Values by the Mathematical Association of America
“The connection between mathematics and poetry is an entirely natural thing,” writes author Radoslav Rochallyi in this blog post, mentioning elements such as the aforementioned algorithms as well as symbols and patterns, all of which connect readily to computational thinking. Rochallyi discusses poetic structure as it relates to mathematic principles such as the golden ratio, but also links to other resources, like this post on equation poetry and a list of references.
“A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers” from Teachers & Writers Magazine
Looking to teach your students about poetry as a whole? This resource, shared in Teachers & Writers Magazine and excerpted from the book by the same name, suggests that teachers “let [poems] do the teaching” by giving space for students to notice word choice, imagery and other intratext connections. Even without an emphasis on math, authors Maya Pindyck and Ruth Vinz still point out the functions of form and pattern as necessities of poetic expression.
“The Wondrous Connections between Mathematics and Literature” from The New York Times
Longtime readers might notice that the author of this essay, Sarah Hart, has been mentioned on Tech-Based Teaching before. Her book Once Upon a Prime was reviewed on the blog last summer, not only as an example of computational joy but as a window into the ways in which writing and math become intertwined — writing that includes poetry. By understanding the depth of this connection, students can begin to see this duality reflected in the world around them.
About the blogger:
Jesika Brooks
Jesika Brooks is an editor and bookworm with a Master of Library and Information Science degree. A lifelong learner herself, she has always been fascinated by the intersection of education and technology. She edits the Tech-Based Teaching blog (and always wants to hear from new voices!).
