Poem fractal

Rooms

by Charlotte Mew

15 November 1869 to 24 March 1928 (~59)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Not only the cry but the gesture and the accent—and so one goes on—calling up witnesses to the real thing!”

Describing her ambition for poetry to capture lived emotion fully · Letter, 1917

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. Letitia Elizabeth Landon · −0.0205 + 0.8309i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Cullen Bryant · −0.0304 + 0.8274i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anonymous · −0.0152 + 0.8173i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Leonard Bacon · −0.0168 + 0.8167i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Madison Julius Cawein · 0.0192 + 0.8561i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
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