Poem fractal

Pre-Existence

by Barry Cornwall

21 November 1787 to 5 October 1874 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poetry in England is assuming a new character, and not a better character. It has a sort of pre-Raphaelite tendency which does not suit my aged feelings. I am for love, or the world well lost.”

Preferring emotional breadth to changing literary fashion · Letter to James T. Fields, quoted in the 1877 biographical volume

More remarks (49)

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. Mina Loy · −0.2288 − 0.7853i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.2428 − 0.7777i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.2456 − 0.8134i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.2382 − 0.8187i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · −0.2547 − 0.8045i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content