Poem fractal

The Music of Beauty

by James Nack

4 January 1809 to 23 September 1879 (~70)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0152 + 0.2356i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Keats · −0.0061 + 0.2493i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anne Brontë · −0.0251 + 0.2393i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Phillis Wheatley · 0.0059 + 0.2017i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.0046 + 0.1955i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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