Poem fractal
0.043 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 James Joyce
−0.5898 − 1.1438i
Drawing the boundary…
by Violet Jacob
−0.6199 − 1.1131i
Drawing the boundary…
Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.
by James Joyce
Strings in the earth and air
Make music sweet;
Strings by the river where
The willows meet.
There’s music along the river
For Love wanders there,
Pale flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.
All softly playing,
With head to the music bent,
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument.
by Violet Jacob
The day was all delight,
Chorus and golden tune;
Rides the steep night
The white ship of the moon.
Now that the night is come
And silence wakes to power,
All that was dumb
Has its triumphal hour.
My soul, behold a sail
The seas of Heaven upon,
Rise up and hail
That roving galleon.
High above winter frost
Speed on uncharted ways,
Enraptured, lost,
Past thrall of nights and days.
Burnt fervent-white with rime,
The blurred earth hangs beneath,
Frost-light sublime,
Frost-tapers lit for death.
Look down the mists and see
The orchards mazed with snow;
Grey, tangled tree,
Lichen and mistletoe.
But, ere the dim world falls
Engulfed, upon your track,
Even at Heaven's walls,
Turn back, turn back!
And as the miles decrease,
By all that foils regret,
By all that is your peace,
My soul, forget.
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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