Poem fractal
0.012 apart. A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.
This number is read from the build of the lines. The bright edge is that number, carried outward until the pattern repeats.
−0.1265 − 0.5533i
Drawing the boundary…
by Alice Cary
−0.1365 − 0.5595i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
The spring of joy is dry
That ran into my heart;
And all my comforts fly.
My love and I must part.
Farewell, my love, I go,
If fate will have it so.
Yet to content us both
Return again, as doth
The shadow to the hour,
The bee unto the flower,
The fish unto the hook,
The cattle to the brook,
That we may sport our fill
And love continue still.
by Alice Cary
Have you been in our wild west country? then
You have often had to pass
Its cabins lying like birds' nests in
The wild green prairie grass.
Have you seen the women forget their wheels
As they sat at the door to spin —
Have you seen the darning fall away
From their fingers worn and thin,
As they asked you news of the villages
Where they were used to be,
Gay girls at work in the factories
With their lovers gone to sea!
Ah, have you thought of the bravery
That no loud praise provokes —
Of the tragedies acted in the lives
Of poor, hard-working folks!
Of the little more, and the little more
Of hardship which they press
Upon their own tired hands to make
The toil for the children less:
And not in vain; for many a lad
Born to rough work and ways,
Strips off his ragged coat, and makes
Men clothe him with their praise.
A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. The large form and the small form are the same kind of thing. A poem can be drawn that way. The shape of the whole comes from the shape of the lines.
Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.
The number under the picture is the poem constant. It is read from the build of the lines: their length, how uneven they are, the size of the stanzas, the share of vowels, and the way the lines end. A new word moves the number when it changes that build. The same poem always gives the same number.
Drawn on its own, that number sits in a quiet part of the plane, and most poems would look like the same soft disk. So the number is carried outward along its own direction until it meets the edge of the Mandelbrot set, where the shape turns sharp. The picture is the Julia set of that meeting place.
Each point on the canvas is folded again and again by one small rule. Points that stay near the rule form the dark interior. Points that rush away become the coloured bands. The hue comes from the poem constant, and the brightest bands turn toward gold. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.
Branching draws the poem as a tree. Each turn follows a line, and every smaller branch repeats that pattern. A longer line reaches farther. The letters at the start of a line bend the next turn. A higher share of vowels opens the branches wider.
The trunk takes its colour from the poem constant and warms toward gold at the tips. When the poem has more than one stanza, gold forks leave the trunk. Each fork is a stanza beyond the first, up to three. The tree divides where the poem divides. One stanza remains a single trunk.
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