Poem fractal

Down in the depth of mine iniquity

by Fulke Greville

3 October 1554 to 30 September 1628 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“These exercises of my youth I dedicate to that worthy Sir Philip Sidney, so long since departed.”

His prose life of Sidney began as an offering of early poems to a dead friend · Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney

More remarks (5)

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. Alexander Pope · −0.2773 − 0.0167i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2542 − 0.0181i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.2622 + 0.0031i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Carl Sandburg · −0.2553 − 0.0361i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2815 + 0.0017i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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