How Math Books Are Like Poetry Books

If you pick up a textbook on poetry and thumb the pages, you will see poems interspersed between explanations, explanations that English professors will call prose. Prose differs from poetry in that it is a major subcategory of how language is used. Prose encompasses all the normal uses: novels, texts, newspapers, magazines, letter writing, and such. But poetry is different! Poetry is a highly charged telescopic (and sometimes rhythmic) use of the English language, which is employed to simul...

 Significance

The wisp in my glass on a clear winter’s night Is home for a billion wee glimmers of light, Each crystal itself one faraway dream With faraway worlds surrounding its gleam. And locked in the realm of each tiny sphere Is all that is met through an eye or an ear; Too, all that is felt by a hand or our love, For we are but whits in the sea seen above. Such scales immense make wonder abound And make a lone knee touch the cold ground. For what is this man that he should be made To sing to The...