Dan May is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, South Dakota. He has spent the last several summers working with Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM), a mathematics enrichment program for underserved middle school students in New York City and Los Angeles. For more information on digraph poetry, see this Bridges paper.

Contact: daniel.may@bhsu.edu

Poetry ⨂ maths ?

Dan May says: ""What the Body Does Next" is a digraph poem, in which the circled sections may be read in any order: a reader starts at any one of the four sections, and proceeds to a next section by following whichever lettered arrow suits them. Assuming a reader can start at any section and makes choices which result in reading each section precisely once, "What the Body Does Next" contains 24 distinct poems. Because the underlying structure is the complete digraph on four vertices (with loops), it is also possible to cycle through the poem infinitely."

Note: What the Body Does Next is a digraph poem, in which the circled sections may be read in any order. The reader is encouraged to start by reading any one of the four circled sections, and then to proceed to a next section based on whichever nearby letter suits them - just follow the corresponding arrow. Assuming a reader can start at any section and makes choices which result in reading each section precisely once, What the Body Does Next contains 24 distinct poems. Because the underlying structure is the complete digraph on four vertices (with loops), it is also possible to cycle through the poem infinitely.

Dan
May