Entry 46 — Clues
The Four Seasons
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3 31 43 73 5 67 3 61 43 67 67 19 41 13 1 11 19 7 31 5 3 12 15 21 4 19 3 18 15 19 19 9 14 7 1 6 9 5 12 4 8 21 25 33 9 30 8 28 25 30 30 16 24 14 4 12 16 10 21 9 64 441 625 1089 81 900 64 784 625 900 900 256 576 196 16 144 256 100 441 81
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Today, just some helpful clues toward the solution of the cyrptographiku above:
1. A cryptographiku is a poem in a code. The code chosen and the way it works has metaphorical significance. The text encoded is generally straight-forward.
2. There are three codes used here, one of them very simple, the other two simple if you are mathematical.
3. The codes were chosen to illustrate a theme of Wallace Stevens’s, to wit: winter is reality at its most fundamental, summer is winter transformed by metaphorical layering.
4. Note that each of thr three lines is the same length, and divided into three “words,” each the same length of the homologous “word” in the other two lines.
5. The decoded text uses a technique Robert Lax pioneered in to convey a meaning I consider archetypally deep, like the meanings Lax’s similar poems have for me.
6. The final meaning of the poem is (a) Nature is eternally changing; and (b) Nature is eternally unchanging. When I saw I could make ti say that, I got a thrill! I consider this poem one of my best inventions–even though I’m not sure it works as a poem.
Have fun, kids!