The Birthday of Emily Dickinson (1830) – Mathematics of Poetry

Dickinson’s poems use metre and rhyme – mathematical structures. Iambic pentameter (10 syllables) is a pattern. Her use of dashes and capitalisation creates visual rhythm – like musical notation. Poetic form is a set of constraints (a grammar). The number of possible sonnets is huge but finite. Dickinson’s nearly 1,800 poems can be analysed statistically (stylometry). Poetry and mathematics both find beauty in constraint and pattern. ‘Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me –’ has 10 and 6 syllables – a variation.