Poem fractal

Coruisk

by Robert Williams Buchanan

18 August 1841 to 10 June 1901 (~60)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The poet is one who sees life newly, assimilates it emotionally, and contrives to utter it musically.”

Defining poetry as a union of fresh perception, emotion and musical expression · Essay, The Poet, or Seer

More remarks (27)

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. Oscar Wilde · −0.4625 + 0.6387i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.4895 + 0.6268i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.4565 + 0.6096i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Keats · −0.4624 + 0.6582i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · −0.4433 + 0.6394i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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