Poem fractal

Sorrow

by Celia Thaxter

29 June 1835 to 25 August 1894 (~59)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before anyone is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness.”

Describing the quiet bliss of early solitude among flowers · An Island Garden

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. George William Russell · −0.1672 − 0.1532i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hart Crane · −0.1427 − 0.1837i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Abraham Cowley · −0.1636 − 0.1829i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Sorley · −0.1739 − 0.1595i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Juliusz Słowacki · −0.1350 − 0.1841i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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