Poem fractal

To the Muse

by Charlotte Smith

4 May 1749 to 28 October 1806 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The sonnet is perhaps the most difficult species of poetry.”

Reflecting on the formal difficulty and expressive possibilities of the sonnet · Preface to Elegiac Sonnets

More remarks (4)

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. Leigh Hunt · −0.3034 + 0.7354i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.3063 + 0.7223i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Austin · −0.3324 + 0.7282i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Keats · −0.2846 + 0.7012i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Crowe Ransom · −0.3458 + 0.7173i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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