Poem fractal

I stand before you as a beggar stands

by Edmund William Gosse

21 September 1849 to 16 May 1928 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In mature years I have always been gregarious, a lover of my kind, dependent upon the company of friends for the very pulse of moral life.”

Friendship framed as the heartbeat of ethical existence · Autobiographical prose

More remarks (16)

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. Sir Thomas Wyatt · 0.7212 + 0.6424i · 0.083 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · 0.8158 + 0.4993i · 0.142 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Donne · 0.6545 + 0.7264i · 0.172 away · Compare side by side
  4. Quintus Horatius Flaccus · 0.9186 + 0.5073i · 0.176 away · Compare side by side
  5. Rudyard Kipling · 0.6928 + 0.4806i · 0.195 away · Compare side by side
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