Who is my favorite poet?

My favorite poet is not well-known yet, but he is inspirational.   His name is Bob Grumman and he writes math poetry.   

I was introduced to his work when I was writing a book The Secret Life of Words, with Maria Damon.   It's now out of print, but it was cool because it introduced kids to poets who were avant garde, or at least weren't the usual poets taught in school.   She and I are thinking of writing another book like this in the future.

Bob Grumman mostly writes long division poems, and they are beautiful.   He calls them "mathemaku."   They sometimes include colors or pictures.   

Check him out here.

When I read his poems I loosen my mind and let the poem in.   They resonate with both sides of my brain, the creative part and the logical part.

I asked his permission to write my book MATHEMATICKLES, and he was very enthusiastic because he wants as many kids as possible to be introduced to math poetry.  

In my book, I included all the operations, multiplication tables, equations, angles, geometry, and fractions, as I mentioned before.   Here's one of my long division poems from the book:

                            leaves
               wind )autumn
                           -colors
                            winter

Autumn divided by wind is leaves.   But it doesn't go in evenly, so leaves times wind is colors.  Autumn minus colors leaves a remainder of winter.

Another favorite poet of mine is bp nichol.   He did a series of poems with variations on the famous haiku about a frog jumping in a pond and making a splash.

Some kids respond to avant garde poetry.   I've actually never met a kid who didn't respond to MATHEMATICKLES, and I've shown it to kids in K-12.   I even got a standing ovation for a long division poem from high school kids.   Bob Grumman was my inspiration for that poem.