Poem fractal

Nell Gwyn

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

5 April 1837 to 10 April 1909 (~72)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Like Diomed, I take what I am given and offer what I have.”

Describing generosity as giving freely from one's own resources · Dedication, William Blake: A Critical Essay

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. Charles Tennyson Turner · −0.3598 + 0.5749i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.3670 + 0.5883i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.3185 + 0.5742i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. J.G. Holland · −0.3138 + 0.5813i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · −0.3118 + 0.5832i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content