Poem fractal

Shut Out

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am open to a hope that I am wrong about our poet: time will show.”

Rossetti leaves room for time to correct even a firmly expressed literary judgement · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 18 February 1892

More remarks (60)

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. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.2358 − 0.4790i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Dickens · −0.2599 − 0.4885i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Madison Julius Cawein · −0.2452 − 0.5079i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · −0.2300 − 0.4597i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. George Gascoigne · −0.2508 − 0.4613i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
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