Poem fractal

Flashlights VIII

by Mary Reynolds Aldis

c. 1872 to 20 June 1949 (~77)

Browse poets 678

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. Charles Whitehead · 0.0023 + 0.3402i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edmund Waller · −0.0099 + 0.3536i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Donne · 0.0374 + 0.3251i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  4. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · 0.0261 + 0.3142i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  5. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu · 0.0396 + 0.3863i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
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