Niagara: Seen on a Night in November
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.
Poem fractal
0.093 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.
−0.4041 − 1.2079i
Drawing the boundary…
by Bliss Carman
−0.4961 − 1.2191i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.
by Bliss Carman
What do men give thanks for?
I give thanks for one,
Lovelier than morning,
Dearer than the sun.
Such a head the victors
Must have praised and known,
With that breast and bearing,
Nike's very own—
As superb, untrammeled,
Rhythmed and poised and free
As the strong pure sea-wind
Walking on the sea;
Such a hand as Beauty
Uses with full heart,
Seeking for her freedom
In new shapes of art;
Soft as rain in April,
Quiet as the days
Of the purple asters
And the autumn haze;
With a soul more subtle
Than the light of stars,
Frailer than a moth's wing
To the touch that mars;
Wise with all the silence
Of the waiting hills,
When the gracious twilight
Wakes in them and thrills;
With a voice more tender
Than the early moon
Hears among the thrushes
In the woods of June;
Delicate as grasses
When they lift and stir —
One sweet lyric woman—
I give thanks for her.
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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