The valiant Rams fought long and hard,
But never did they win.
Each week they listened, tried, and learned;
But they struggled to begin,
But always there that awful score
Mocked laughingly at them,
And kids at school that called them poor
Had reason to condemn—
Or so it seemed—for oft was heard
From backs of rooms and such,
“Our team is awful; did you hear?
Fifty-five points is way too much
Some quit, some loafed, some stayed and cried;
Some questioned what they did.
But those who stayed had faith and guts,
The shame they always hid.
And in their hearts they grasped that hope
That someday, maybe soon,
Through sweat and weights and efforts strong
The machine would run in tune.
And so, while now we toast the guys
And girls we love so dear,
The Rams we said in small blue signs
Were coming here this year,
Were just a little late, dear folks—
Never worry, THEY’LL BE HERE!
Poetry
Some people might say that I am a rhymer rather than a poet. I have had the ability to make rhyming lines fairly easily, but I like to think that my poetry has more in it than just rhyme. I love imagery–the sights, sounds, smells, feels and movements of natural things, and I try to make my poetry very concrete and real. For some reason, funerals have been a very large part of my poetic efforts, I suppose because poems celebrate a life better than mere speech. At any rate, I have included some poetry here, and I hope you like it. As always, the subject matter is very diverse.
Here is a poem I wrote while Molly, my wife, was teaching calculus. Her students had told her that they did not understand poetry: that the subject matter was so obscure, meaningless, and irrelevant. She replied that poetry could be about anything. They rebutted by saying, “Right! I suppose you could write a poem about mathematics!” Taking the challenge, she said, “Yes, you could write a poem about math.” “Let us see one then,” they countered. Molly came home and told me the story. “Is there some way we can make a poem about math?” she queried. I said, “Well, if you will help me with the terminology, I will try.” Here is what we came up with.
TRIGONOMETRY
By Dan Spier
There is nothing in life so darn hectic
As a brain in a course trigonometric.
I had much rather study invasions
Of Vandals and Huns than equations.
And especially ones like quadratics!
They’re fit only for fools and fanatics!
While my social life sits and relaxes,
My dumb brain is a blur of Y-axes.
Even tangents and points of inflection,
Make me suffer a loss of direction.
While derivatives—both first and second,
Are a little bit more than I reckoned.
When old fractions turn inverse proportions,
My sinuses go through contortions.
My domain is as strange as an ocean,
And my slope and my range? I’ve no notion!
I think radians are tires for one’s auto,
And determinants words for one’s motto.
Logarithms sound right for percussion,
And matrices good for discussion.
But my function’s velocity’s dropping,
And I sense by acceleration stopping.
My vertex’s endpoint—it dangles,
As I’m swallowed in huge right triangles.
All my maximums minimum weakly,
As my anti-log poem ends bleakly,
I guess if one thinks perpendiculous,
Trigonometry’s not so ridiculous.