Poem fractal

What then is love

by Thomas Ford

c. 1580 to November 1648 (~68)

Browse poets 678

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. Richard Lovelace · −0.1042 − 0.0700i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.0678 − 0.0697i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Stevenson · −0.1115 − 0.0507i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir Lewis Morris · −0.0599 − 0.0716i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Arthur Symons · −0.0926 − 0.0956i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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