Poem fractal

She I love (alas in vain!)

by Walter Savage Landor

30 January 1775 to 17 September 1864 (~89)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.”

Authors as competitive rivals · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

More remarks (112)

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. Dylan Thomas · 0.0439 − 0.4563i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Bell Scott · 0.0413 − 0.4664i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · 0.0638 − 0.4466i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Joshua Henry Jones · 0.0476 − 0.4800i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Browning · 0.0794 − 0.4773i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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