POEM

Click on a title in the list below.
 
POEM: Zito the Magician
Response: Complex Matters
Response: The Student Replies



We have received the following responses to the Zito the Magician poem published in the November 2010 LMS Newsletter.


Complex Matters

Published online 1 December 2010

If α = π/2 + i β, then sin α = cosh β which is greater than one for non-zero β.

Bruce Christianson
University of Hertfordshire

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The Student Replies

Published online 1 December 2010

Switching bottles is the easy part,
Magician; here, we want you to deceive.
We like the practised motions of your shallow art,
tricks with insects, flowers up your sleeve,
and smile at willing courtiers well concealed
as hints of their true natures are revealed.

Thoughtless imaginings and carefree words,
seeming contradictions in the mental air,
are honest frauds, coherent and absurd.
But real imagination reaches deep, and where
imaginary numbers, multiples of i,
replace the real their sines, by i divided,
permit us to reply:
sine is unbounded.
Spring from your nutshell,
quit your simple home,
and in the complex let your magic roam.

Jeremy Gray
The Open University

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INCLUDED IN THE NOVEMBER 2010 NEWSLETTER:


ZITO THE MAGICIAN

Published online 12 October 2010

*** This item has been removed ***

Editorial note: This poem by Miroslav Holub was published in the November 2010 printed Newsletter. It was also published online, but has been removed from this web page in January 2011 because of a time limit on the online licence granted by the publisher. To read the poem, please refer to the published collection cited below, or you may be able to find a licensed online version using Google.

Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations, 1991, Bloodaxe Books, 274 pp, ISBN 978-1-852-24122-3.


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