Life, and Death, and Giants
Life, and Death, and Giants —
Such as These — are still —
Minor — Apparatus — Hopper of the Mill —
Beetle at the Candle —
Or a Fife’s Fame —
Maintain — by Accident that they proclaim —
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.
−0.1947 − 0.4533i
Drawing the boundary…
by Dylan Thomas
−0.1958 − 0.4323i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Life, and Death, and Giants —
Such as These — are still —
Minor — Apparatus — Hopper of the Mill —
Beetle at the Candle —
Or a Fife’s Fame —
Maintain — by Accident that they proclaim —
by Dylan Thomas
Paper and sticks and shovel and match
Why won’t the news of the old world catch
And the fire in a temper start
Once I had a rich boy for myself
I loved his body and his navy blue wealth
And I lived in his purse and his heart
When in our bed I was tossing and turning
All I could see were his brown eyes burning
By the green of a one pound note
I talk to him as I clean the grate
O my dear it’s never too late
To take me away as you whispered and wrote
I had a handsome and well-off boy
I’ll share my money and we’ll run for joy
With a bouncing and silver spooned kid
Sharp and shrill my silly tongue scratches
Words on the air as the fire catches
You never did and he never did.
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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