Poem fractal
0.015 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 Alice Corbin
−0.5361 − 1.0187i
Drawing the boundary…
−0.5232 − 1.0108i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by Alice Corbin
I hear America singing,
And the great prophet passed,
Serene, clear, and untroubled,
Into the silence vast.
When will the master poet
Rise with vision strong
To mold her manifold music
Into a living song?
I hear America singing,
Beyond the beat and stress,
The chant of her shrill, unjaded,
Empiric loveliness.
Laughter, beyond mere scorning,
Wisdom surpassing wit,
Love, and the unscathed spirit,
These shall encompass it.
Small hands, relinquish all
Nothing the fist can hold,—
Not power, not love, not gold—
But suffers from the cold,
And is about to fall.
The mind, at length bereft
Of thinking, and its pain,
Will soon disperse again,
And nothing will remain:
No, not a thought be left.
Exhort the closing eye,
Urge the resisting ear,
To say, “The thrush is here”
To say, “His song is clear”;
To live, before it die.
Small hands, relinquish all:
Nothing the fist can hold,
Not power, not love, not gold,
But suffers from the cold,
And is about to fall.
The mind at length bereft
Of thinking and its pain,
Will soon disperse again,
And nothing will remain:
No, not a thing be left.
Only the ardent eye,
Only the listening ear
Can say, “The thrush was here!”
Can say, “His song was clear!”
Can live, before it die.
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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