Poem fractal

The House That Jack Built

by Anonymous

Browse poets 678

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −1.0244 − 0.3712i · 0.103 away · Compare side by side
  2. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −1.0558 − 0.5219i · 0.143 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −1.1111 − 0.2535i · 0.144 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.9967 − 0.5681i · 0.214 away · Compare side by side
  5. Hervey Allen · −0.9187 − 0.2793i · 0.237 away · Compare side by side
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