Poems Structured by Mathematics

Abstract

Poets have long used mathematical ideas in the structure of their poetry. Sometimes the mathematical structure of a poem is simple and obvious, while the mathematics guiding other forms of poetry is more opaque. Pre-twentieth-century examples often included combinatorial techniques and sometimes offered the reader choices which rendered thousands of poetic possibilities out of a single short text. Since the mid-twentieth century, the use of explicit mathematical poetic form has become more intentional. Founded in the 1960s, the Oulipo remains a group of writers interested in the overlap of mathematics and poetry. One of the founders of the group, Raymond Queneau, explored the generalization of the sestina, and the work produced around this question remains a highlight in the mathematics of poetry. Other well-known poetic forms, such as the haiku and pantoum, can be described in mathematical terms. Many less famous mathematical poetic forms also exist. Poets have structured their work according to numerous mathematical ideas, including the Fibonacci sequence, pi, Latin squares, Platonic solids, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, graphs, and finite projective planes. This chapter presents these ideas and also includes the occasional example of a poet intentionally violating the strict mathematical form in which they write.