Poem fractal

My Orcha'd in Linden Lea

by William Barnes

22 February 1801 to 7 October 1886 (~85)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Anglo-Saxon has not been cultivated into a better form, but has been corrupted for the worse, since King Alfred's days.”

Arguing that the development of standard English had involved a loss rather than an improvement in the language · Se Gefylsta

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. Richard · 0.0356 − 0.3454i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. Grace Fallow Norton · 0.0154 − 0.3384i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anne Spencer · 0.0541 − 0.3444i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · 0.0348 − 0.3234i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · 0.0488 − 0.3655i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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