Poem fractal
0.046 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.
−0.1476 − 0.3185i
Drawing the boundary…
by Thomas Carew
−0.1833 − 0.3472i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
Quhy sowld I luve bot gif I war luvit?
Quhy sowld I sett myne hert in variance?
Quhy sowld I do the thing to be reprovit?
Vnto my spreit it war richt grit grevance.
Quhy sowld I schamefully thus me avance
To lovin on, and scho not loving me?
Than war I gydit with misgovirnance,
That I sowld luve and I not lovit be.
by Thomas Carew
When thou, poore excommunicate
From all the joyes of love, shalt see
The full reward, and glorious fate,
Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
Then curse thine owne inconstancy.
A fayrer hand than thine, shall cure
That heart, which thy false oathes did wound;
And to my soul, a soul more pure
Than thine, shall by Loves hand be bound,
And both with equall glory crown’d.
Then shalt thou weepe, entreat, complain
To Love, as I did once to thee;
When all thy teares shall be as vain
As mine were then, for thou shalt bee
Damn’d for thy false Apostasie.
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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