Poem fractal

Solipsism

by George Santayana

16 December 1863 to 26 September 1952 (~89)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”

A concise account of how conviction can become detached from purpose · Philosophical work, The Life of Reason

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. Alice Meynell · −0.2544 − 0.4246i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Burns · −0.2673 − 0.4118i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.2645 − 0.4270i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ben Jonson · −0.2527 − 0.4345i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Greenleaf Whittier · −0.2637 − 0.4334i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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