Poem fractal

Lydia

by Lizette Woodworth Reese

9 January 1856 to 17 December 1935 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“None of us ever escape the first few years of our lives. They make a mould into which we are cast, and though it may be broken, and we turned loose, some remnant of it, some intangible evil or lovely thing or both, will remain with us, like the odor to a flower, or the smoothness to a piece of ivory. It is part of the immortality of youth.”

On the indelible shaping power of early childhood · A Victorian Village: Reminiscences of Other Days, 1929

More remarks (2)

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. Thomas Hood · −0.0405 − 0.7550i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anthony Munday · −0.0654 − 0.7542i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.0548 − 0.7357i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Herrick · −0.0330 − 0.7339i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.0560 − 0.7835i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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