Poem fractal
0.113 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.
−0.9770 + 0.0455i
Drawing the boundary…
by Hervey Allen
−0.8697 + 0.0801i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
I saw the day lean o'er the world's sharp edge
And peer into night's chasm, dark and damp;
High in his hand he held a blazing lamp,
Then dropped it and plunged headlong down the ledge.
With lurid splendor that swift paled to gray,
I saw the dim skies suddenly flush bright.
'Twas but the expiring glory of the light
Flung from the hand of the adventurous day.
by Hervey Allen
The old black crone beside the fire
Will be awake this Friday night,
Honing an axe—honing, honing—
And a West Indian melody intoning.
For Saturday will bring at early light
The wagons with the chickens from the farm,
And she will taste the last of all delight—
Killing, killing chickens in the court,
The old, dark granny's only sport—
The axe and twitching bodies, and the blood
Upon her hands, splashes on her face like mud
From thick volcanic springs still warm.
To-night she takes the clay pipe from her hair—
Honing, honing—
And lights it by the faggot's orange glare,
Sucking the rank tobacco and the midnight air—
This old West Indian crone—
Drooling, droning, feeling the axe along,
Crooning, moaning an old, old song.
Ah, sweet, to take another being's breath!
So near the grave,
To prove herself alive by dealing death.
To hear the sudden chop, chop, chop,
To see the headless bodies flap and flop—
The piteous chuckling and the chortling
Of her victims and the thrill
Of the axe, and the flash,
And the flap, flap,—plop—
And the rows of feathered bodies lying still!
"Ah-eee," she sings and she sighs,
Listening to the mating of the cats, and the cries
Of the owls and the ring
Of the axe that she fingers
With the touch of the harpist, when he lingers
On the last high note—
That is rising in her throat—
She could sing to the axe, she could sing!
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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