Poem fractal
0.021 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.
−0.5219 − 0.0214i
Drawing the boundary…
by Alice Corbin
−0.5428 − 0.0259i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
What is beauty but a breath?
Fancy’s twin at birth and death;
The color of a damask rose
That fadeth when the north wind blows.
’Tis such that though all sorts do crave it,
They know not what it is to have it—
A thing that sometime stoops not to a king,
And yet most open to the common’st thing:
For she that is most fair
Is open to the air.
by Alice Corbin
Autumn color and twilight moon,
Thin-blown leaves, and a twisted fire
Climbing the edge of the waves to the moon;
Slender and thin as a silver wire,
The voice of the moon, and the keen desire
That calls through birches and delicate laces
Of pale gold leaves, invisible faces
Of lovers that linger where daylight wanes
For the ancient showers and liquid rains
That the full moon pours through the fragile veins.
From the rose-colored dreams of day,
To the wave-swept sands of the shore,
Secretly, shadows grey
Steal to the edge of the shore,
Steal to the silver sands,
Lifting their fragile hands:
Give us the twisted fire,
Fill us with old desire,
Moon of the maddened lyre,
Moon of the singing wire!
The golden leaves grow grey and fall,
Twilight dies in the west,
The sea-gull turns to the wave for rest,
The land-bird dips to the sheltered nest,
But the shadows keep their quest,
And over the baréd breast,
The silver arrows fall;
Still the liquid fire
Wakes the old desire,
Liquid showers and liquid rains
Fill the heart and the beating veins.
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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