Disappearing Context
If you are not familiar with "Similar Triangle Poems" please read this link before going further.
One of the things that excite me the most about mathematical poetry is the fact that one can mathematically merge poems into each other. The results of these operations are extremely interesting in how the context of the common variable disappears. Or in other words the common context that both poems share … disappears. This is a feature that no other poetic form can accomplish and we are going to accomplish it in this blog entry. One can perform this feat on multiple mathematical poems however we are going to show how it is done on just two. The first thing that one needs to have ready is at least two poems that share a common “variable” or “term.” In our example (above) we have the common context of “money”. In other words both mathematical poems share a common term in the form of a word, in this case money. In the first poem we have the idea that Man is to Blood as God is to Money and simultaneously we have the idea that Man is to God as Blood is to Money.** In addition we have the second poem which states that The Victor is to “Honor in War” as Money is to “Righteous Effort” And Simultaneously it says The Victor is to Money as “Honor in War” is to “Righteous Effort”
Now let’s solve both poems for the term “Money”
The image above shows both poems ‘solved’ for money. Since both poems are now in the form of being equal to money then we now must set both poems equal to each other. By setting them equal to each other we have merged the two poems together and everything is still logically intact. The image below shows both poems set equal to each other.
Now that we have the two poems merged into one let’s look at how the meaning has been changed by the reformation. Let us solve the new poem for the term “Honor in War” and see how it reads.
Wow! This poem reads right out of a Patriots Bible yet the two poems that created it were both cynical and possibly sarcastic in relation to the Patriot's beliefs. Once the context of money was taken out we have an entirely new situation. This reminds me of how a person can be consciously holding back a lie yet, speaks dancing truths all around the lie. In this case the money is the lie.
**Also an interesting feature of Mathematical Poetry is that all the different possible syntax structures in a poem exist at the same time therefore when you read a mathematical poem, in each of their different syntax states, the temporal meaning of the poem fills up much like a glass of water when you turn on the faucet.
