Poem fractal

A Poet's Thought

by Barry Cornwall

21 November 1787 to 5 October 1874 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“These questions lie between him and God.”

Placing ultimate moral accountability beyond human law · Autobiographical fragment, Chapter III (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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4924 − 0.7612i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.4761 − 0.7570i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Frances E. W. Harper · −0.5024 − 0.7673i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Marianne Moore · −0.5102 − 0.7679i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Freeman · −0.4862 − 0.7363i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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