Poetry in Math

Poetry is not one of the first things you associate with math. In fact, poetry is usually only thought of as something taught in English or language arts classes. With the move to create cross curricular materials, why not try out poetry in math.

Believe it or not, poetry and math have quite a lot in common.  Both require a preciseness of thought to express ideas exactly as wanted.

There is at least one website, called "Intersections - Poetry With Mathematics"  that collects mathematically based poetry into one place.  Some of the topics covered by the poetry include primes, geometry, circles and so much more.  JoAnne Growney is responsible for creating this blog and finding all the poetry that is either on the subject of math or based on mathematical rules.  So far, she has managed to find over 900 entries so you'll have a lot to choose from.

If you would rather have students try writing poetry, there are so many different possibilities to use in class.  Haiku is a good one to start with as it has a very specific form and isn't very long.  It consists of three lines with 17 syllables total.  The first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables, and the third line has 5 syllables.  If your students would like a few samples, this site has several written by several calculus students.  This site with a few Haiku examples written by a retired math teacher and they could be used to introduce the topic of Haiku so students can see the actual structure.

Another possibility is using sonnets in class since sonnets also have a specific form.  I admit, I only took the minimum number of English classes to graduate from college but fortunately, I found a nice site with great information on sonnet writing.  It gives you the exact structure and steps to use to write one.  Furthermore, it even explains how the sonnet tells a story, breaking down a poem showing how each group of lines contributes to the story.  To introduce mathematical sonnets, look at this site or this site.  On the other hand, let the English teacher introduce sonnets in that class so you can have students write them in yours.

There is a type of poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence call "Fib".  The numbers represent the number of syllables in each line so if you look at the sequence of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8....... you poem would have one syllable in the first line, one syllable in the second line, two syllables in the third line, three syllables in the fourth line, etc.  This site has a nice example of this type of poem.  This type of poetry has been around only since 2006 or so when Gregory K. Pincus created it.  It is know a recognized form of poetry.

Then there is the "Snowball form" of poetry which can be found in two forms. The first is where you start with one word or syllable in the first line, two words or syllables in the second line, and it continues adding one word or syllable to each following line until the poem is finished.  The other form follows the same pattern until the fifth line and then begins decreasing a word or syllable for the next few lines until you are down to one word or syllable.

Finally is the "N + 7" form in which you take a poem, any poem, but it is recommended it be a relatively short poem.  You also need a large physical dictionary because you replace each noun with the next noun that is seven words away in the dictionary.  This site explains the process in more detail while this site has examples of the snowball, fib, and N + 7 forms.

Think about getting together with the English teacher to work together during a poetry unit.  It is easy to spend 10 or 15 minutes over several days and then share the poems at the end of a week or so.  Some schools have poetry events to share student written poetry.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.