Poem fractal

He said he had been a soldier

by Dorothy Wordsworth

25 December 1771 to 25 January 1855 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them.”

A vivid record of wonder before an ordinary scene transformed by attention · Grasmere Journal

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. William Vaughn Moody · 0.0482 − 0.6599i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. A. Milne · 0.0550 − 0.6718i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.0619 − 0.6587i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Bateson · 0.0550 − 0.6796i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · 0.0285 − 0.6811i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
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