I liked math and could still keep my scholarship as a math major. I took enough classes to obtain teacher certification because my mother (widowed young) knew that a woman should have "a career to fall back on." Drawn to creative writing, I thought it could be an option to do on the side in available time. I became a teacher -- junior high school math and science to start, then high school mathematics.  I learned to explain things, to expect things of my students. Marriage to a physics student who planned on graduate school opened my eyes to that possibility. I discovered I was smart -- and earned an MA and a PhD. I bore and adopted children and got a job as a professor at a state college that is now a state university. I wrote professional articles--often related to the links between mathematics and the arts. And, eventually, as my children grew and needed less time, I turned back to creative writing. I am a poet.

I offer here three poems that will help you to know who I am. Don't get me wrong. I quite like mathematics and science.  And every other sort of thinking as well.

--- 

My Dance Is Mathematics 

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

From "Dirge without Music" by Edna St Vincent Millay; offered by Hermann Weyl in a Memorial Address for Amalie "Emmy" Noether on April 26, 1935 at Bryn Mawr College.

They called you der Noether, as if mathematics
was only for men. In 1964, nearly thirty years
past your death, I saw you in a spotlight
in a World's Fair mural, "Men of Modern Mathematics."

Colleagues praised your brilliance--but after
they had called you fat and plain, rough and loud.
Some mentioned kindness and good humor
though none, in your lifetime, admitted it was you
who led the way in axiomatic algebra.
Direct and courageous, lacking self-concern,
elegant of mind, a poet of logical ideas.

At a party when you were eight years old,
you spoke up to solve a hard math puzzle.
Fearless, you set yourself apart.

I followed you and saw you choose
between mathematics and other romance.
For women only, this exclusive standard.

I heard fathers say, "Dance with Emmy--
just once, early in the evening. Old Max
is my friend; his daughter likes to dance."

If a woman's dance is mathematics,
she dances alone.

Mothers said, "Don't tease. That strange one's heart
is kind. She helps her mother with the house
and cannot help her curious mind."

Teachers said, "She's smart but stubborn,
contentious and loud, a theory builder
not persuaded by our ideas."

Students said, "She's hard to follow, bores me."
A few stood firm and built new algebras
on her exacting formulations.

In spite of Emmy's talents,
always there were reasons
not to give her rank
or permanent employment.
She's a pacifist, a woman.
She's a woman and a Jew.
Her abstract thinking
is female and abstruse.

Today, history books proclaim that Noether
is the greatest mathematician
her sex has produced. They say she was good
for a woman.

Amalie "Emmy" Noether was born in Germany (1882) and educated there; she fled the Nazis to the US in1933 and died on April 14, 1935 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

--- 

A Taste of Mathematics

A mathematician left the convention
focused on 9, the digit that sits
in the billionth decimal place of pi,
ratio of circumference to width
of the yellow circle that parted the clouds
as she strolled down Commerce Street
to the Rio Rio Café for lunch and a beer.

On fire with jalapeños
she went shopping
for a souvenir.
She bought earrings —
red-red plastic peppers
with green stems.

She said, "Hot peppers
are like mathematics —
with strong flavor
that takes over
what they enter."

--- 

This next poem is not mathematical but perhaps it is, even more than the preceding, a self-portrait.

I Don’t Know Much about Gods 

but they don't live in houses brightly painted 
on narrow streets in small towns and don't 
celebrate the ordinary as I do and my friends.

I doubt paradise.  I see mostly what is small 
and not too far away, dislike to start 
new things, will build on old foundations.

No river runs in me, no sea surrounds.  
My corner is a tidy garden plot.
I plant and nourish, pick the crop —

with care I cook, enjoy my fare, wash up, 
and sleep to rise another day.  Gods should 
introduce themselves to girls like me.

---

And, finally, a word about my latest venture which is a blog (entitled "Intersections--Poetry with Mathematics") and available at http://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com.  I invite you to visit and to comment--and to suggest topics to include.

JoAnne Growney
Silver Spring, MD
13 April 2010

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