I admire poets and their spare, nimble way with words. Me? I’m not so crafty with iambic pentameter but give me the stricture that comes with a haiku (5-7-5) or a cinquain (a 5-line poem with specific rules about word choice or syllables), and I’m all over it. So you can imagine my “squee” when I came across this NPR blog post about Pi-ku in honor of Pi Day, celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th (get it? 3-14) A Pi-ku is like a haiku, only nerdier.* Ready to play?

First line: 3 syllables
Second line: 1 syllable
Third line: 4 syllables

The laundry
waits
On small cat feet

I know now
What
I thought I knew

Mockingbird
Sounds
Sweeter than “tweets.”

Every word
counts
In a Pi-ku

*Full, embarrassing disclosure: This was the lame cheer we used to root for the MIT crew team during Up Chuck Weekend: Tangent, secant, cosine, sine, 3.14519!