Let Us Now Praise Prime Numbers by Helen Spalding

Let Us Now Praise Prime Numbers

by Helen Spalding

Let us now praise prime numbers

With our fathers who begat us:

The power, the peculiar glory of prime numbers

Is that nothing begat them,

No ancestors, no factors,

Adams among the multiplied generations.

None can foretell their coming.

Among the ordinal numbers

They do not reserve their seats, arrive unexpected.

Along the lines of cardinals

They rise like surprising pontiffs,

Each absolute, inscrutable, self-elected.

In the beginning where chaos

Ends and zero resolves,

They crowd the foreground prodigal as forest,

But middle distance thins them,

Far distance to infinity

Yields them rare as unreturning comets.

O prime improbable numbers,

Long may formula-hunters

Steam in abstraction, waste to skeleton patience:

Stay non-conformist, nuisance,

Phenomena irreducible

To system, sequence, pattern or explanation.

This poem was published in An Anthology of Modern Verse 1940-1960, edited by Elizabeth Jennings (Methuen, 1961).

Who doesn't love a great math poem?!?

That sounds sarcastic, but I am serious. As someone who struggled with math in school, who was one of those silly creatures who thought I would never need this, I have done a complete turnaround. Working in retail and having to balance out cash registers, do inventory, and other everyday math tasks was my first real world wake up. Then I started quilting (before this, I was into sewing, beading, and general crafting, all of which also use math, but I never made the connection); quilting, like weaving, is all about math. Heavy duty math. I realized my sour grapes attitude from before was wrongheaded. Now I look for math poems with enthusiasm. I also admit that when I return to quilting after not having quilted for awhile, it is the math aspects that make me nervous and need to be re-learned. I will be doing this soon. Fingers crossed.

And this one is wonderful, starting with the first line--this is not just an ode, this poem requires trumpets and bowing and a cavalcade! And we are doing this with our dads (due to what comes next, I see this as both specifically fathers and as all ancestors).

I am a fan of math but no expert--I had to look up Adams. John Couch Adams was an English mathematician and astronomer, best known for better understanding the existence of Neptune, figuring out the origins of meteor showers, his dedication to teaching, and also being awarded an insane number of awards for his work.

Back to the poem. Stanza two gives us some personification, which I think is brilliant in this case--anything to help make math more understandable. Plus, Spalding makes prime numbers seem delightful and a little edgy--they just show up without reservations. Then the poet steers us towards a religious metaphor--prime numbers are "absolute, inscrutable, self-elected," like "surprising pontiffs." This is a description I am likely to remember forever!

The poet gets back to numbers in the third stanza, explaining how prime numbers are close together when we start counting from 0 (2 is the first, and it is the only even priome number--just some fun math trivia for you), but the distance between them grows as we count. Eventually, they are spaced so far from one another they become as "rare as unreturning comets," which is another wonderful metaphor. Plus, it is math based!

The fourth and final stanza (6 line stanzas are called sestets, by the way) has a first line much like the poem's first line; starting with "O," it connotes grandeur. Spalding addresses prime numbers directly here, telling them to stay themselves: non-conformist and nuisance, and not allowing themselves to be completely understood.

The sounds throughout this poem are also something to be admired. The first stanza has a lot of hard sounds; these continue throughout the poem, but decrease. By the fourth stanza, we are inundated with sensual "s" sounds. It is as if the poet knows we will be reluctant at the start and uses sound to bond with us. Then she slowly seduces us to be not just math-friendly, but as big a fan of prime numbers as the poem's speaker. All of this sound work is, of course, working on a subconscious level--great poets, like great advertisers, know how to get into our brains without us even realizing it. The difference is that poets are not selling anything and just want the world to be smarter, better, and more at peace.

I came upon this poem purely by accident, looking for something that had me Google "prime number poem." Happy serendipity!

If you would like to read a short academic paper on prime numbers, math, and poetry (it includes a lot of math poems!), click here for "The Poetry of Prime Numbers" by Sarah Glaz. I just discovered this article as I was typing this and was looking for information on Helen Spalding. As with many of the poets, especially the women, whose poems I have posted recently, she is a person of whom little is known.

See you on Sunday!