Poem fractal

Sorrowful Music

by Bayard Taylor

11 January 1825 to 19 December 1878 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“To Truth's house there is a single door, which is experience.”

Affirming lived experience as the only reliable path to truth · As commonly attributed from his writings

More remarks (2)

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. Joanna Baillie · −0.4774 − 0.4297i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.4948 − 0.4249i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · −0.4895 − 0.4156i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard Aldington · −0.4533 − 0.4359i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · −0.4992 − 0.4570i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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