Poem fractal

A Cassandre

by Pierre de Ronsard

11 September 1524 to 27 December 1585 (~61)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I will ask you only one thing, reader: to pronounce my verses well and fit your voice to their passion, and not read them in the manner of a letter.”

Original: Je te supliray seulement d'une chose, lecteur, de vouloir bien prononcer mes vers et accomoder ta voix à leur passion, et non comme quelques uns les lisent, plustost à la façon d'une missive. — Verse meant to be spoken with feeling, not scanned like prose · Preface to La Franciade (French)

More remarks (9)

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.9611 − 0.8133i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  2. Antonio Machado · 0.9641 − 0.8072i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Joyce · 0.9318 − 0.9186i · 0.074 away · Compare side by side
  4. Langston Hughes · 1.0313 − 0.8833i · 0.099 away · Compare side by side
  5. Quintus Horatius Flaccus · 0.8359 − 0.7874i · 0.119 away · Compare side by side
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