The Pedagogy of Moonlight

Here is a new 'proportional poem' titled "The Pedagogy of Moonlight" - the image is a photo shot in the very early morning moon light at an old abandoned schoolhouse in the Cedar Swamp area along the west bank of the Delaware river a few miles east of Townsend Delaware along route 9. (see if you can find it on Google street maps) There is a thunderstorm off in the distance and a breeze evident in the clouds. The muses whisper this mathematical poem to me and demand me to share it with you.
There are four ways to solve this equation with each variable or you can set it up in proportions where it will read:

 "Pining the Infinite" is to "Lost Mathematics" as "The Wind of Time" is to "Obscure Sorrow"
--OR--
"Pining the Infinite" is to "The Wind of Time" as "Lost Mathematics" is to "Obscure Sorrow"

 Below is a detail of the equation:

Substitution in Mathematical Poetry

Substitution in Mathematical Poetry

If you have no understanding of similar triangles poems then please read about it at the following link: “Similar Triangles Poem”

This Blog entry will show an example of substitution in mathematical poetry. Substitution can occur when we have two equations that have a common term. For example let’s look at the two equations which have the same form as two similar triangles poems: A = BD/E and A = HJ/U since both equations have the term ‘A’ in common and consequentially they both happen to be solved for ‘A’ then we can set both equations equal to each other as such:

BD/E = HJ/U

We know that we can solve for any of the variables in our new equation and get a new equation in terms of one variable. Let do so and solve for ‘J’ so we now have: J=UBD/EH

So now let’s apply what we have just witnessed to two similar triangles poems.

First of all we must look at the following two poems.

We know from our earlier example that we can solve a mathematical equation for any term in it. If we take the first poem and solve it for “my memories” we then can present the poem as:

Notice (below) that we have the two poems solved for the same term (my memories).

Now we can set each poem equal to each other because they both have identical terms. (see below)

We also know that we can solve this poetic equation for any of the terms in it. So let us solve this poem in terms of “Delaware River”

Now we can see that the later poem was derived from the two similar triangles poems shown at the top. What is interesting is that all of the logical processes used to create the first two poems are contained in our resultant poem including the subtle differences in the contexts of each initial poem.
Substitution can also be used in poems created by different poets as long as they have a common term. Follow this link to collaborative substitution poems.

The following polyaesthetic piece uses the image of a shipping beacon located at Cedar Swamp on the Delaware side of the Delaware River. The full Delaware River Poem from our example is nestled in the lower left hand corner of the image. The physical size of the digital image is 67” x 31”

Delaware River Correction

I actually made a mistake on my last blog entry. I meant to post the two similar triangles poems (above). If you were on your toes you would have noticed that the last blog entry was actually the same equation (poem) solved for different terms. Today’s entry is two different poems that also share a common term. What is interesting is what we will do with these two poems on the next blog entry. Can you guess what I will do?