Poem fractal

Sevillanas

by Manuel Machado

29 August 1874 to 19 January 1947 (~73)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“But old things too have their pleasure, their special magic, a delicate and subtle charm across time.”

Original: Pero hay en las cosas antiguas también su agrado, su magia especial, un encanto delicado y fino a través del tiempo. — Affirming that old things possess a beauty distinct from novelty · Essay, Por la capa, in La guerra literaria (Spanish)

More remarks (25)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 1.2888 − 0.9582i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 1.2898 − 0.9028i · 0.059 away · Compare side by side
  3. Witter Bynner · 1.1723 − 0.9453i · 0.096 away · Compare side by side
  4. Paul-Jean Toulet · 1.3636 − 0.9855i · 0.100 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 1.0661 − 0.9730i · 0.203 away · Compare side by side
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