Poem fractal
0.026 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 A. A. Milne
−0.2165 − 0.7006i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.2007 − 0.7214i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by A. A. Milne
When Anne and I go out a walk,
We hold each other's hand and talk
Of all the things we mean to do
When Anne and I are forty-two.
And when we've thought about a thing,
Like bowling hoops or bicycling,
Or falling down on Anne's balloon,
We do it in the afternoon.
Go, go, quaint follies, sugared sin,
Shadow no more my door;
I will no longer cobwebs spin,
I'm too much on the score.
For since amidst my youth, and night,
My great preserver smiles,
We'll make a match, my only light,
And join against their wiles;
Blind, desperate fits, that study how
To dress, and trim our shame,
That gild rank poison, and allow
Vice in a fairer name;
The purls of youthful blood, and bowels,
Lust in the robes of love,
The idle talk of feverish souls
Sick with a scarf, or glove;
Let it suffice my warmer days
Simpered, and shined on you,
Twist not my cypress with your bays,
Or roses with my yew;
Go, go, seek out some greener thing,
It snows, and freezeth here;
Let nightingales attend the spring,
Winter is all my year.
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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