Math poetry?

One of the more controversial forms of poetry I have stumbled across in my random internet wanderings is the Fibonacci poem. This form bases itself around the Fibonacci sequence which orders itself 0,1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. In case you aren’t a math person and thereby familiar with this concept, the sequence is created by adding the preceding two numbers to come up with the next number. For instance, 0 + 1 = 1 and then 1 + 1 = 2. Once discovered this sequence began popping up everywhere from tree rings to spirals in conch shells. Nature operates around the Fibonacci number, some claim

So how does this relate at all to poetry? It seems that someone decided this formula could be applied to poetry and so created Fibonacci poems. Since lots of natural elements revolve around this sequence, writers working with the sequence could be said to mimic nature (like many poets before them) but in a completely revolutionary way….using MATH, the high school pitfall of many an aspiring poets. Whether the numbers are reflected in the syllables or words per line, lots of people are trying out this strange connection.

Now back to the first sentence of this post which you may have forgotten…why is this controversial? I was slightly miffed when I first read about this form because it seems this engenders the idea that there can be a formula for a successful poem. “It’s like the movement sweeping the food industry, “It’s natural, it might taste terrible, but it’s natural so it must be the right way to go.” I’m not saying that these poems taste terrible, on the contrary I say “check it out at http://poetry.about.com/od/poeticforms/a/fibonaccipoems.htm” but also I feel the need to stress there is no formula for poetry, no sequence that promises a perfect poem every time.