Poem fractal

Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone

by John Farmer

c. 1570 to c. 1605 (~35)

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. Claude McKay · −0.4148 + 0.0893i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Bell Scott · −0.4153 + 0.0658i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · −0.3950 + 0.0781i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Nichols · −0.3942 + 0.0757i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Hood · −0.4140 + 0.0501i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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