Poem fractal
0.036 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.
−0.4813 − 0.7721i
Drawing the boundary…
by John Freeman
−0.4862 − 0.7363i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Tell me, what is a poet's thought?
Is it on the sudden born?
Is it from the starlight caught?
Is it by the tempest taught,
Or by whispering morn?
Was it cradled in the brain?
Chain'd awhile, or nurs'd in night?
Was it wrought with toil and pain?
Did it bloom and fade again,
Ere it burst to light?
No more question of its birth:
Rather love its better part!
'T is a thing of sky and earth,
Gathering all its golden worth
From the Poet's heart.
by John Freeman
Because the earth is vast and dark
And wet and cold;
Because man's heart wants warmth and light
Lest it grow old;
Therefore the house was built — wall, roof
And brick and beam,
By a lost hand following the lost
Delight of a dream.
And room and stair show how that hand
Groped in eager doubt,
With needless weight of teasing timber
Matching his thought —
Such fond superfluousness of strength
In wall and wood
As his half-wise, half-fearful eye
Deemed only good.
His brain he built into the house,
Laboured his bones;
He burnt his heart into the brick
And red hearth-stones.
It is his blood that makes the house
Still warm, safe, bright,
Honest as aim and eye and hand,
As clean, as light.
Because the earth is vast and dark
The house was built —
Now with another heart and fire
To be fulfilled.
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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