Poem fractal

Kissing her hair I sat against her feet

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

5 April 1837 to 10 April 1909 (~72)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The office of poetry is neither to preach nor to teach, but to delight.”

Emphasising poetry's power to give pleasure rather than instruction · Essay / literary criticism

More remarks (54)

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. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.1599 + 0.2147i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Donne · −0.1358 + 0.2228i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · −0.1205 + 0.2179i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.1139 + 0.1946i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.1667 + 0.1726i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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