Mathetry

Ok, if you have a better way to combine the words math and poetry, let me know! :)

My friend Sergey recently let me read a couple of his poems, and there was one that I just had to put on Engineering is Cool.

The avant-garde isn't dead;
a proof by
contradiction.

Assume the avant-garde is dead.
Then there is nothing new under the sun.
Since the number of ideas is now fixed
at some positive integer k,
there will eventually be one individual
who will study each and every idea,
1,2,...,k.

But that individual can create an idea,
numbered k + 1,
that is unlike everything
else
already in creation. Then the (k+1)st idea
will be avant-garde.
QED.

More Sergey poems here

How often do you see the term "equivalence class" in a poem? Not often enough, that's how often! I don't know much about poetry, but I do know that there isn't much in this world that is more beautiful than a class whose elements are reflexive, symmetric, and transitive.