Poem fractal

Sephestia's Song to Her Child

by Robert Greene

c. 11 July 1558 to 3 September 1592 (~34)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“For there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you.”

A sharp denunciation of literary borrowing and theatrical ambition, traditionally understood as an attack on Shakespeare. · Groats-Worth of Wit

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. E. Nesbit · −0.1789 − 0.4746i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anne Brontë · −0.1577 − 0.4625i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.1912 − 0.4734i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Allan Cunningham · −0.1925 − 0.4700i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Whiting · −0.1783 − 0.4855i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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