When Poetry meets Math and they get drunk

This is a lightly updated version from the original piece on The Michigan Daily.

P(re).S: Mathematics’ name is inspired by :Maryam Mirzakhani, a late Iranian mathematician and the first woman to receive a Fields Medal.

*Poetry and mathematics find themselves chatting at a dinner party.*

Poe: Hey, are you Mathematics?

Maryam: Yeah, but you can call me Maryam. You’re Poetry, right?

Poe: Yup, but I go by Poe. Not very creative, I know.

Maryam: I’m sure you’re fine.

Poe: Do you know who’s hosting this party?

Maryam: Probably Business?

Poe: Yeah. Probably.

*A waiter comes by with a tray of drinks. Maryam takes the wine. Poe snags the brandy and chugs it.*

Maryam: Woah.

Poe (shrugging): You gotta get your alcohol where it’s free.

Maryam: So uh… what do you do?

Poe: You know that Netflix show, “The Midnight Gospel”?

Maryam: To be honest… no. I don’t really watch TV, or have one.

Poe: Okay… weird. Well, in the last episode, they talk about meditation as a way to “step out of yourself.” It’s this really beautiful idea of taking a pause on daily life, like entering spectator mode in a video game.

Poe: All of a sudden, you realize that things like grades aren’t really important, but reading, writing, seeing friends — those things are. Poetry is like that.

Maryam: Ah, I see.

*Poe lifts a bottle of brandy from a passing waiter. It’s reasonable to assume he’s going to drink it all.*

Poe: Yeah. It’s supposed to pull people out of the sauce. But nobody ever talks about how fucking hard it is to write something like that.

Maryam: The what?

Poe: The sauce. You know: homework, job applications, other applications, and the like. People spend most of their lives getting lost in the sauce, and I’m supposed to get them to remove their heads from their asses. But, of course, they keep trying to dive back in. Like here… listen to this:

*He taps a square on his chest where the heart would be, and it pops open like a drawer. He takes out a slip of paper and reads it.*

Maryam: Oh, damn.

Poe: Or this:

Maryam: Oh wow. I really felt that.

Poe: You do, right? You see how you’re not thinking about how expensive alcohol has gotten, or about your next deadline at work, filling out school and job applications, or anything of the sort.

Maryam: I do see that, yes.

Poe: See, exactly. I try to break them out of their dreadful, banal realities and remind them what being human should mean. It’s universal human experiences that we use to try and take people out of their bubbles. And it’s hard because you can’t just get those at Trader Joe’s.

Poe: But not many people care so we don’t get paid much, hence my taking advantage of the free booze.

Poe(burps): Excuse me. I’ve been acting a little drunk. Anyway, it’s nice to see that some STEM people appreciate poetry.

*The camera pans to show Chemistry, who’s scribbling some hexagons on a napkin and desperately explaining them to Biology.*

Maryam (laughing): I think it is perhaps just me. Honestly, I relate a lot to what you’ve said, warts and all. A lot of what you’ve said about poetry is also true of math.

Poe: Oh shit, for real?

Maryam(sipping her wine): Yes! Like what you said about breaking people out of their world, pure math is very much about constructing a world through reason inspired by, but ultimately separate from, the “real” world.

Maryam: What is true in this mathematical world is true universally — across time, space, nationality, religion, race, and whatever else people divide themselves by. Like, even if everything turns out to be a simulation, everything we know about a vector space would still be just as true in the “real” world.

Maryam: So even though everything in pure math is just stuff people made up, it’s arguably more real and more permanent than… all of this.

*She gestures broadly at everything around her.*

Poe: Ah, so the mathematical world is analogous to the pure, inner self that people can access through meditation, and the greater human experience that people can access through poetry.

Maryam: Yes. You are very quick :)

Poe: I’ve never thought about such extreme scenarios like our world being a simulation, but I suppose that universal feelings and experiences are still, in some sense, real. Even if the world is a simulation, surely the concept of grief or of love still exists.

Maryam: That’s precisely the idea.

Maryam: I also think math does a very good job of bringing people out of their own heads and giving them a different perspective from which to view the world. You’re immersed in this other world which, if you believe to be more real, then that becomes sort of the plane that you’re looking down from.

Poe: It sounds kind of meditative because you get to detangle yourself from ordinary “reality” and be immersed in the world of math.

Maryam: Yes, and there’s an intrinsic beauty to some theorems, but also in how frequently and powerfully they can apply to what’s in the “real world”.

Maryam: In his book, “Mathematics for Human Flourishing”, former president of the American Mathematical Association, Francis Su, said “When you see the same beautiful idea pop up everywhere, you begin to think that it is pointing to some deeper truth you haven’t yet grasped. When you realize that you’ve had exactly the same mathematical thoughts as another person… you begin to believe there might be a universal, enduring reality that you are both somehow accessing.”

Poe: Mmm… an enduring human reality, yes.

Maryam: And there is this sense of inevitability and elegance that accompanies many mathematical theorems, and it… I can’t put it in words, but do you get what I mean?

Poe: I think I do.

Poe: It’s like a poem so perfect that when you look at it, you can’t pick out a single fault, from design to execution. Every stroke is so natural and, in hindsight, so obvious that it could not possibly have been any other way.

Maryam: Yes… yes, that’s it. You understand.

Poe: It’s like you said, we’re remarkably similar.

Maryam (quietly): Not to mention that math people also don’t get paid very much.

*The waiter comes by again and smartly leaves the drinks tray with the two friends.*

Poe: You don’t either? But from what you’ve said, math sounds so useful! Even by human standards they should-

Maryam: Applied math is useful, and there’s a lot of it in certain industries like finance. Pure math, though — people say it’s “impractical.”

Maryam(sips): People don’t see me like they see you. At least they treat you like art. Math is only incidentally “useful,” which is not good enough for them. It’s not entirely their fault, though, but a failure of the education system.

Poe(swig): Barely an art anymore. When was the last time you saw someone holding a book of poems? People think we’ve lost our minds and the “old ways”. The way they teach poetry to children is tedious, too, “This is poetry and this is what it means!” Then they get mad when adults lack media literacy. It’s a wonder anyone still stumbles into it.

Poe: I think you can relate to this well, the way most other subjects question why you should exist, or why anyone should care. It’s very de-subjectilizing.

Maryam: Yeah, my people constantly get asked, “What’s the point?”

Poe: Not out of curiosity, of course.

Maryam: Of course not. The point is beauty! And discovery! And surprise! The point is to know something to be true once and for all. The point is, as Jordan Ellenberg puts it, to “feel like you’ve reached into the gut of the universe and put your finger on the wire.”

Poe: Jordan Ellenberg, writer? Mathematician?

Maryam: Both, incidentally. Cool guy.

Poe: Yeah.

Poe: Actually, I think both of us are lumped into the category of things which are “almost useful”: stuff that don’t intrinsically hold utility, but which help make people’s existence as human beings meaningful. You know? That’s what they say, isn’t it, that math is almost useful.

Maryam(nodding): Yeah, it’s meant to be an insult. But I think what’s really insulting is “almost useless”, like report cards, diamonds, wars. They achieve a very specific purpose, but I’m not sure what else they’re good for besides that.

Poe(sighs): Why have they got it backwards?

Maryam: Who knows what they’re doing down there.

Maryam(sighs): Anyway, do you want to see a cool trick? Brighten up the mood?

Poe: Sure.

Maryam: There’s this theorem called Brouwer’s fixed-point theorem which says that if I do this…

*Maryam picks up her wine glass, covers the top and shakes it vigorously. She then places it back where it was.*

Maryam: …and put it back where it was exactly, and assuming none of the wine spills out, then there is at least one point of the liquid that is in the same place it was before I shook it.

Poe: What. The. Fuck? No way.

Maryam: But it is true! This is a specific application of the fixed-point theorem, which they proved in 1910.

Poe: Oh wow… I don’t think I’d understand this even if I was sober.

Maryam: It’s very unintuitive, and the proof is quite technical. But actually this is the same theorem which guarantees that when you’re trying to find your way around a large shopping mall and come across a map, that there is a “You are here” label!

*Poe surprised face.*

Maryam: In both cases there is a continuous function from an object to itself (the map is just a shrunken down version), and the theorem states that at least one point is fixed by this function. For the wine, that means at least one of the liquid particles is in the same place it was before. For the map, that means there’s at least one point on the map such that the coordinates it marks are exactly its own coordinates.

Maryam: You could also imagine crumpling up the map and kicking it around, but as long as you don’t take it outside the mall, the same thing will be true.

Poe: That… does kind of make sense, actually. It’s cool that these two very different concepts now have that one thing in common.

Maryam(giddy): Right?

Poe: How do you come up with this stuff?

Maryam: Ah, well first you look at what’s already there, and you ask a question. Is this thing always true? And if so, why?

Maryam: Usually you should ask questions you think you might be able to answer, but sometimes you find out you can’t and that’s okay, and yet other times you get sent down a totally different direction, and that’s okay too.

Maryam: It can also get quite messy and ugly in the midst of it. The clean, austere theorems you see are the cleaned-up end products…

Poe: That actually sounds almost exactly like the process of writing a poem.

Maryam: Mhm… and then you have to actually write it up and submit it for publication etc.

Poe: Yup.

Poe: Agonize over the choice of words, fight the editors, all that good stuff.

Maryam: Hah, exactly. Which step do you think is the hardest?

Poe: The fourth one – getting people to read it.

Maryam: Aw, it’s okay. Hardly anyone reads my stuff either.

Poe: Oh ya, forgot who I was complaining to.

Maryam: Well anyway, we tend to study things in the abstract so that they can be applied very generally. Poincaré called math “The art of giving the same name to different things.”

Poe: Connections… yeah. We connect situations to feelings and feelings to words and words to people. The difference is that we rely on peoples’ associations with the objects that we reference, but the similarity is that associations can build on top of each other.

Poe: When I see a forest covered in snow, I will always think of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Even when I just read the words “snowy forest”, there is an association to this poem. Poems give meaning and context beyond mere definitions, and there are so many ways to describe the same thing.

Poe: Take grief — you could say that it’s a piece of the sky in a museum; or that “The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,”; or “Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle”. And now when you hear the word “museum”, it sounds a little different, and stars can make you cry.

Maryam: …Ah, that’s so beautiful.

Poe: As an unknown poet quipped to your Poincaré, “Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing.”

Maryam: That was very poetic of them indeed.

*Guests start filing out. The servers come around to collect dishes.*

Poe: …It looks like the party is ending… Let’s go sit on the roof? I can carry the alcohol.

…

Poe: It’s hard sometimes, right? I’ve probably said this before, when I was drunk, but it’s not easy to write poetry, and it’s certainly not easy to do math.

Maryam (sighing): I think you are still drunk, but yeah. It’s always hard.

Poe: How do you overcome it? I mean, how do you keep going when the work gets grueling, and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to care about what you’re doing?

Maryam: Well, _I _know it’s important, for one. Even if the other people don’t see that — first of all, I do have important applications, they are just hundreds or thousands of years away! But also, there is so much beauty intrinsic to the subject and so much to know that it’s hard to just walk away. Yes, the math students get tons of homework that they sometimes can’t finish, but that is how you learn. Even the process of doing homework with other people is an enriching experience that builds community.

Poe: I believe the term you are looking for is “trauma-bonding”.

Maryam: Ah yes, a math degree comes with many inside jokes. What was I saying? Oh yes, the second thing is kind of a spiritual commitment to lean into that which is “truly real,” instead of the other things that people made up.

Poe: Yes. Your made-up thing is better than their made-up thing.

Maryam: Exactly. And I guess the third thing is that I really just try to have a lot of fun when I can. Math people don’t get to escape from their societies, so even their world can get “lost in the sauce,” as you say. The remedy is to do some unserious math: Find out how many times you should shuffle a deck of cards, 3D print stuff, turn a piano into a Möbius strip, make string art and so on. You probably won’t get a medal, but you’re having fun, so who cares.

Maryam: I guess, in some sense, my other points boil down to having fun, too. Having fun with the subject, having fun with other people and having fun being better than other made-up things.

Poe: I see. Thanks for sharing.

Maryam: And what about you? What do poets do to… cope? I know you said writing poetry isn’t easy.

Poe: It almost never is. This isn’t just me, but writers tend to drink a lot. It loosens the subconscious from the rigidity that society often asks of us. Other drugs, too. “The Midnight Gospel” spends some time talking about psychedelics and alternate forms of consciousness.

Maryam (laughing): Our biggest commonality: looking at sacred geometry on a Friday night.

Poe: You really kill me.

Poe: Anyhow, seriously, it’s awfully hard to come up with something new to say, in a way that hasn’t already been said to death. I can experiment with different forms and constraints to see where the words lead me, but it’s still a heavy task to write about things which you barely understand. You do learn about them more in the grueling process of writing, though, so I guess that’s a motivation to keep going.

Maryam: So you are trauma-bonding with yourself.

Poe: Could you save it for the end? I’m having a moment here.

Poe: As I was about to say, I guess for me, personally, I think of the people who I’d want these poems to reach. There are so many of them, and their world is so big. I think even if just one person can feel the intimacy and familiarity that I sometimes feel when I read a poem, then all the struggle would have been worth it, you know? It’s like you said, I know it’s important.

Poe: Mark Vonnegut said something which I really liked: “Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have.” And I would add, too, that writing is a form of resistance, and what it resists is the pressure to always be doing something that is economically productive.

*Maryam nods.*

Poe: …And then there’s a third thing, as well, which is like what you said about just playing around and having fun. Poems can be fun, too. It doesn’t always have to be about some great truth of life.

Poe: It could just be a limerick from Edward Lear:

There was an Old Person of Basing,
Whose presence of mind was amazing;
He purchased a steed,
Which he rode at full speed,
And escaped from the people of Basing.

Poe: Or like a double dactyl. Here’s “Call Me By Your Name”, from Madi Hammond:

Higgledy-piggledy
Timothee Chalamet
Gave me chlamydia
At NYU.

Itching and burning for
Unsatisfactory
Boning from Elio –
Glad he withdrew!

Maryam: Oh I love limericks! Wait…who’s Timothée Chalamet?

Poe: Get a TV … for my sake. Forget I showed you that. The point is that their world is going to shit, and they should at least have fun with it.

Maryam: You write poems, right? Maybe you could do something with that…?

Poe: Oh, hush.

*Poe looks to the sky, eyes searching through the plum-colored dusk. Earth looks melancholic from this angle, even though Maryam would say it just looks like a 2-sphere.*

Poe: You really should watch “The Midnight Gospel.” I think you’ll like it.

Maryam: I’ll add it to my list.

Poe: I’m serious. Don’t forget.

Maryam: I promise I will watch it. Unlike the people on earth who study math, I have a lot of time on my hands.

Poe: Good. You should have fun sometimes.