Poem fractal
0.047 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 Bliss Carman
−0.1998 − 1.0091i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.1568 − 0.9914i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by Bliss Carman
I heard the summer sea
Murmuring to the shore
Some endless story of a wrong
The whole world must deplore.
I heard the mountain wind
Conversing with the trees
Of an old sorrow of the hills,
Mysterious as the sea's.
And all that haunted day
It seemed that I could hear
The echo of an ancient speech
Ring in my listening ear.
And then it came to me,
That all that I had heard
Was my own heart in the sea's voice
And the wind's lonely word.
I started early—took my dog—
And visited the Sea—
The mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me—
And Frigates—in the upper floor
Extended hempen Hands—
Presuming me to be a mouse—
Aground—upon the sands—
But no man moved me—till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe—
And past my apron—and my belt
And past my Bosom—too—
And made as He would eat me up—
As wholly as a dew
Upon a dandelion's sleeve—
And then—i started too—
And He — He followed—close behind—
I felt His Silver Heel
Upon my ankle — then my Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl—
Until We met the Solid town—
No man He seemed to know—
And bowing—with a mighty look—
At me—the Sea withdrew.
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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