Poem fractal
0.030 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.
by Robert Frost
0.2632 − 0.4616i
Drawing the boundary…
by Owen Seaman
0.2391 − 0.4793i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
by Owen Seaman
He came obedient to the Call;
He might have shirked like half his mates
Who, while their comrades fight and fall,
Still go to swell the football gates.
And you, a patriot in your prime,
You waved a flag above his head,
And hoped he'd have a high old time,
And slapped him on the back and said:—
"You'll show 'em what we British are!
Give us your hand, old pal, to shake;"
And took him round from bar to bar
And made him drunk—for England's sake.
That's how you helped him. Yesterday,
Clear-eyed and earnest, keen and hard,
He held himself the soldier's way—
And now they've got him under guard.
That doesn't hurt you; you're all right;
Your easy conscience takes no blame;
But he, poor boy, with morning's light,
He eats his heart out, sick with shame.
What's that to you? You understand
Nothing of all his bitter pain;
You have no regiment to brand;
You have no uniform to stain;
No vow of service to abuse,
No pledge to King and country due;
But he had something dear to lose,
And he has lost it—thanks to you.
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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