Poem fractal
0.005 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 Hart Crane
−0.4148 + 0.0316i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.4122 + 0.0268i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by Hart Crane
Up the chasm-walls of my bleeding heart
Humanity pecks, claws, sobs, and climbs;
Up the inside, and over every part
Of the hive of the world that is my heart.
And of all the sowing, and all the tear-tendering,
And reaping, have mercy and love issued forth.
Mercy, white milk, and honey, gold love—
And I watch, and say, "These the anguish are worth."
The hill-winds coming, the hill-winds going,
They have no care for my heavy fret;
I lay my face in the long grass growing,
And dream of Moirin, and half forget
That never a wind in the world is blowing
Her thoughts to my heart that loves her yet.
The hill-winds going, the hill-winds coming,
I take no heed of them all day long —
Though I lie in their heart from dawn to gloaming,
And hark the bees where the clovers throng:
And, O wild bees, that you'd hush your humming:
What comfort is there in comb or song?
The hill-winds fly without care or cumber,
And scent of bean-fields they bring to me,
Where magic flowers without name or number
Are sending dreams where sad sleepers be:
But none so deep as the honeyed slumber
Of Moirin drowned in the Ictian Sea.
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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