Poem fractal

John-John

by Thomas MacDonagh

1 February 1878 to 3 May 1916 (~38)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The poet is the interpreter of the world to men, and the interpreter of men to the world.”

Defining poetry as a reciprocal act of understanding between humanity and the world · Essay, Literature in Ireland

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. Charlotte Brontë · 0.1922 − 0.3014i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Maurice Thompson · 0.2051 − 0.3376i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · 0.1693 − 0.3159i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Browning · 0.2200 − 0.3322i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · 0.1660 − 0.3524i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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