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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Edna St Vincent Millay died (19/10/1950)
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2024 22:23:58 +1300
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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American poet. Born 1892.
Don't get much of a language connection, except insofar as every poet 
has one.

Crystal quotes at length from a satirical piece she wrote in the early 
20s in reaction to the prevailing spirit of wowserism in America 
(Prohibition, etc.) "dancing abolished...Sale of crepe paper and colored 
balloons prohibited. Two men surprised in Central Park with pockets full 
of confetti; and given sixty days each."

In looking around for more information, I came across a line:

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.

which took me back to a book I was given for Christmas, age 14:

Imagination's Other Place: Poems of Science and Mathematics
Compiled by Helen Plotz (NY,Thomas Y.Crowell, 1955).

And here it is. I should read it again.

Here's how that short poem ends:

Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

This took me back to the algebraist Bomshik Chang, who taught one of the 
last mathematics courses I took, before I decided math was not my life's 
calling. He loved algebra, found beauty in it, and communicated this 
experience in his lectures. I see he died in 2012, but he's remembered 
for something:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang_number

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edna-st-vincent-millay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay