An atomic sprite perched on a polished monster-stallion reigns over Ringling's revolving trinity of circus attractions
Something the contour of a captured crab waving its useless pearly claws
From a squat body pigmy arms and bow legs with their baroque calves curve in a bi-circular attitude to a ballerina's exstacy
An effigy of Christmas Eves smile-cast among chrysanthemum curls it seems a sugar angel while from a rose flecked ruff of gauze its manly legs stamp on the vast rump of the horse
An iridescent speck dripped from a rainbow onto an ebony cloud
Crab-Angel I christen you minnikin of masquerade sex Helen of Lilliput? Hercules in a powder puff?
There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – We can find no scar, But internal difference – Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any – 'Tis the seal Despair – An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air –
When it comes, the Landscape listens – Shadows – hold their breath – When it goes, 'tis like the Distance On the look of Death –
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Track 1
How this picture is made
What a fractal is
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.
How the boundary is drawn
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.
What the branching signifies
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.