Let Me Count the Ways: Poetry and Mathematics

Catalog description

Homer and Euclid, Stein and Einstein, manifestos and manifolds, negative capability and imaginary numbers. This seminar exists somewhere in the ampersand between Arts & Sciences and will concern the study of numbers, poetic and otherwise. We will consider poets from a range of global traditions as theorists and makers of numerical patterns, and explore mathematical texts for their ludic and literate foundations. With help from diverse ethno-mathematical traditions and contemporary literary/number theorists, we will study, for example, quirky verse constructed around the Fibonacci sequence but also, and more crucially, we will learn how to count on one another as readers. (ENGL-LOA)