Poem fractal

Ganymede

by Witter Bynner

10 August 1881 to 1 June 1968 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“They are the heart of an intimate letter.”

Characterising the finest poems as direct, personal acts of communication · Essay, Poetry and Culture, introduction to The Jade Mountain (1929)

More remarks (39)

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. Elizabeth Barrett Browning · −0.6186 + 0.7366i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Tennyson Turner · −0.6249 + 0.7335i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Austin · −0.6139 + 0.7007i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Moore · −0.5990 + 0.7516i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · −0.6532 + 0.6965i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
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