Poem fractal
0.022 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.
−0.0825 − 0.7661i
Drawing the boundary…
by John Donne
−0.1030 − 0.7582i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
For what we owe to other days,
Before we poisoned him with praise,
May we who shrank to find him weak
Remember that he cannot speak.
For envy that we may recall,
And for our faith before the fall,
May we who are alive be slow
To tell what we shall never know.
For penance he would not confess,
And for the fateful emptiness
Of early triumph undermined,
May we now venture to be kind.
by John Donne
I have done one braver thing
Then all the Worthies did,
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is, to keepe that hid.
It were but madnes now t'impart
The skill of specular stone,
When he which can have learn'd the art
To cut it, can finde none.
So, if I now should utter this,
Others (because no more
Such stuffe to worke upon, there is.)
Would love but as before.
But he who lovelinesse within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who colour loves, and skinne,
Loves but their oldest clothes.
If, as I have, you also doe
Vertue' attir'd in woman see,
And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the Hee and Shee;
And if this love, though placed so,
From prophane men you hide,
Which will no faith on this bestow,
Or, if they doe, deride:
Then you have done a braver thing
Then all the Worthies did;
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keepe that hid.
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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