Poem fractal

History of a Life

by Barry Cornwall

21 November 1787 to 5 October 1874 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The world is not gazing at you with all its eyes. It has other things to contemplate.”

A bracing reminder against artistic self-importance · Autobiographical fragment, Chapter IV (published posthumously, 1877)

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. Howard Phelps Putnam · 0.0092 − 0.5520i · 0.002 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lord Byron · −0.0052 − 0.5382i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.0308 − 0.5428i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lord Byron · 0.0344 − 0.5548i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · −0.0256 − 0.5526i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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