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.
by Joyce Kilmer
0.4576 − 0.8385i
Drawing the boundary…
0.4346 − 0.7987i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Your looks so often cast,
Your eyes so friendly rolled,
Your sight fixëd so fast,
Always one to behold:
Though hide it fain ye would,
It plainly doth declare
Who hath your heart in hold,
And where good will ye bear.
Fain would ye find a cloak
Your burning fire to hide:
Yet both the flame and smoke
Breaks out on every side.
Ye can not love so guide
That it no issue win;
Abroad needs must it glide,
That burns so hot within.
For cause your self do wink
Ye judge all other blind,
And secret it you think
Which every man doth find.
In waste oft spend ye wind
Your self in love to quit:
For agues of that kind
Will show who hath the fit.
Your sighs you fetch from far,
And all to wry your woe;
Yet are ye ne'er the narre:
Men are not blinded so.
Deeply oft swear ye no,
But all those oaths are vain
So well your eye doth show
Who put your heart to pain.
Think not, therefore, to hide
That still itself betrays;
Nor seek means to provide
To dark the sunny days.
Forget those wonted ways;
Leave off such frowning cheer;
There will be found no stays
To stop a thing so clear.
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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