Poem fractal

A Dithyrambic on Wine

by Thomas Godfrey

4 December 1736 to 3 August 1763 (~27)

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. Louis MacNeice · −0.2524 + 0.0763i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2284 + 0.0854i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2733 + 0.0692i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard Lovelace · −0.2128 + 0.0718i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2226 + 0.0371i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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