Poem fractal

The gods have heard my vows

by Thomas Weelkes

25 October 1576 to November 1623 (~47)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“These six dishes full of divers madrigals, the first fruits of my barren ground, unripe in regard of time, unsavoury in respect of others. Therefore taste, and again I pray you: if they like your appetite, spare not my orchard; if they offend your stomach, lay them by to ripen, and you shall prove of my latter vintage.”

Modest self-appraisal of early work as unripe fruit awaiting fuller harvest · Dedication to George Phillpot, Madrigals to 3, 4, 5 and 6 Voices, 1597

More remarks (4)

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. Louise Chandler Moulton · −0.3222 − 0.9578i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hilda Doolittle · −0.3288 − 0.9344i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hardy · −0.3404 − 0.9499i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Elinor Wylie · −0.3522 − 0.9566i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.3529 − 0.9232i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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