Poem fractal

The Sundew

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

5 April 1837 to 10 April 1909 (~72)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A great poem is a work of art, and not a sermon.”

Distinguishing imaginative creation from direct 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. Bernard Barton · −0.3422 − 0.4595i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Maria White Lowell · −0.3382 − 0.4663i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Clare · −0.3252 − 0.4503i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.3224 − 0.4453i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan · −0.3186 − 0.4497i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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