Mathematics and love coupled in professor's book of poetry

Mathematics and poetry are two of Sarah Glaz’s passions. They are melded together in her new book, Strange Attractors, Poems of Love and Mathematics.

The book, published by A K Peters Ltd., is an anthology of about 150 poems that are strongly connected to mathematics in form, content, or imagery, says Glaz, a professor of mathematics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The collection includes poetry from all around the world, some in translation, and spans about 3,000 years. In addition to works by noted poets and scientists, the book also contains several by Glaz.

Love is the common theme of the poems in Strange Attractors. The first chapter focuses on romantic love between two people, while the poems in the second chapter are about love of family, nature, and life, and spiritual love. The last chapter centers on love for mathematics and mathematicians.

The book is co-edited by mathematician JoAnne Growney.

Glaz, whose mother read poetry to her as a child, says she started enjoying poetry before she even knew how to count.

“I’ve been fascinated with it all my life,” she says. “I’ve been collecting poems with mathematical connections for as long as I can remember.”

Glaz and Growney came to write the book after several years of e-mail correspondence. Their relationship began when Glaz found a chapbook – a pocket-sized booklet – of poetry with a mathematical theme that Growney had published.

“I contacted her and we corresponded via e-mail for several years before deciding to write the book together,” Glaz says. “We met for the first time this January at a mathematics conference, where we celebrated the book’s publication.”

Glaz says finding poetry for the book was easy: “Both of us had large collections of poems with links to mathematics. Choosing the poems was the bigger problem.”

Many poets use mathematical language to express love, Glaz says. “I think that any strong emotion makes you feel you don’t have enough words to express it. Searching for new ways of expression leads some poets to the language of mathematics.”

In a poem from “Five Poems about Zero,” Eryk Salvaggio writes about losing love:

Zero is a number

of yearning.

In your absence,

I have nothing.

But it’s mine.

“Sacrifice and Bliss,” a poem by Kaz Maslanka, is in the form of a mathematical equation. “The equation-poem involves the mathematical notion of a limit,” Glaz explains.