Poem fractal

Ring out your bells

by Sir Philip Sidney

30 November 1554 to 17 October 1586 (~32)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Of all writers under the sun the poet is the least liar.”

Historians and scientists affirm and so can err; the poet invents without asserting · Essay, The Defence of Poesy

More remarks (12)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

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.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.2219 − 0.3734i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Theodore Henry Shackelford · −0.2082 − 0.3767i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · −0.2290 − 0.3648i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Nichols · −0.2166 − 0.3505i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Mackay · −0.2146 − 0.3473i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
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