It was more than a year later that I agin made a mathemaku whose background was integrated with its foreground, my 41st mathemaku, "Mathemaku for Robert Lax." Its dividend was just part of a word that formed a background to much of the long division apparatus. From then on, I've done only a few more in which background is consequential, and I'm up to around my 70th mathemaku--or hundredth if you count each mathemaku in my different sequences such as Long Division of Poetry. This is not a virtue. Ergo, I'm trying as much as possible now always to make my mathemakuical backgrounds count. That's where the fragment of my latest one above, "Mid-December Mathemaku," comes in: originally, the full poem had no background; realizing this as soon as I had it all laid out, I thought of adding a background of crumpled poems by Shakespeare--because part of one of his sonnets is quoted in it. Later, I simply overlaid my long division on part of my "Mathemaku for Ezra Pound." The fragment shows part of that poem behind and above my new poem's quotient, "dock." It is also under my subdividend product, but you can't see it. There's no huge reason for the background's inclusion, but I think showing the division process in vivo a touch more interesting than showing it in vitro. The final result is also more interesting visually, I feel certain.

I've done three other mathemaku in the past two or three weeks, all to be submissions to Poetry. The first, "Mathemaku in Praise of Language," made direct use of the background, something I wrote about here. My next, "Mathemaku for Narmer," which I've also discussed here, makes use of a background, too--although not as explicitly as "Mathemaku in Praise of Language." I forgot about background when I made my third recent mathemaku, "Mathemaku for William Blake," and probably won't add one. Strange how difficult it is to make use of the full page--for me, at any rate.