Poem fractal
0.041 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.
−0.5063 − 0.9926i
Drawing the boundary…
by Bliss Carman
−0.5414 − 1.0137i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
I havn't told my garden yet,
Lest that should conquer me;
I havn't quite the strength now
To break it to the bee—
I will not name it in the street,
For shops would stare at me,
That one so shy—so ignorant
Should have the face to die.
The hillsides must not know it,
Where I have rambled so,
Nor all the loving forests
The day that I shall go—
Nor lisp it at the table,
Nor heedless by the way
Hint that within the riddle
One will walk today—
by Bliss Carman
There is a world of being
We range from pole to pole,
Through seasons of the spirit
And weather of the soul.
It has its new-born Aprils,
With gladness in the air,
Its golden Junes of rapture,
Its winters of despair.
And in its tranquil autumns
We halt to re-enforce
Our tattered scarlet pennons
With valor and resource.
From undiscovered regions
Only the angels know,
Great winds of aspiration
Perpetually blow,
To free the sap of impulse
From torpor of distrust,
And into flowers of joyance
Quicken the sentient dust.
From nowhere of a sudden
Loom sudden clouds of fault,
With thunders of oppression
And lightnings of revolt.
With hush of apprehension
And quaking of the heart,
There breed the storms of anger,
And floods of sorrow start.
And there shall fall,—how gently!—
To make them fertile yet,
The rain of absolution
On acres of regret.
Till snows of mercy cover
The dream that shall come true,
When time makes all things wondrous,
And life makes all things new.
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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