Poem fractal

The Heart Breaking

by Abraham Cowley

1618 to 28 July 1667 (~49)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Virtue is its own reward, but it seldom finds an appreciative audience.”

Reflecting on how noble character often goes unnoticed by the world · Prose essay, Of Virtue

More remarks (30)

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. Wilfred Owen · 0.0530 − 0.3092i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Burns · 0.0468 − 0.3030i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christopher Smart · 0.0470 − 0.3199i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Blake · 0.0702 − 0.2626i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ben Jonson · 0.1020 − 0.2937i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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