Poem fractal

The Ballad of Judas Iscariot

by Robert Williams Buchanan

18 August 1841 to 10 June 1901 (~60)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Realism, properly so called, is truth, and truth is always beautiful.”

Linking genuine realism with artistic truth rather than mere literal detail · Essay, Society’s Looking-glass, 1862

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.4733 − 0.6819i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Paul Laurence Dunbar · −0.4851 − 0.6733i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Francis Ledwidge · −0.4817 − 0.6540i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Chatterton · −0.4580 − 0.6517i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charlotte Richardson · −0.4540 − 0.6537i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
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