Poem fractal
0.007 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.
0.0285 − 0.6811i
Drawing the boundary…
by John Skinner
0.0252 − 0.6873i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.
My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.
Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:—
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.
by John Skinner
What stupid creatures are the French,
Quite free from superstition;
Yet when they die, 'tis hard to say,
What can be their condition?
Of Heaven they entertain no thought,
Since it can no way fit them;
And as for Hell, the despot there
Has more sense than admit them.
If then for Hell they have no chance,
And to Heav'n have no pretension;
Some other dwelling must be found,
To lodge the French Convention.
Or, as their new philosophy
Has laid the fine foundation,
Their only prospect now must be
A blest annihilation.
How must these miscreant wretches move
Our anger, or our laughter,
Who wish to live like monsters here,
And nothing be hereafter!
Preserve us, Reason, taught by Grace,
From reveries so beastly;
By whomsoever set afloat,
By Price, or Payne, or Priestly.
May Britons thankful still, and wise,
Beware of Gallic leaven;
So we need have no fear of Hell,
And grace will give us Heaven.
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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