Poem fractal

Circumstance

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 to 6 October 1892 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There was no natural congruity between the rhymes thus alphabetically grouped together.”

Explaining why mechanical lists of rhymes cannot generate organic poetry · F. T. Palgrave’s recollections

More remarks (44)

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. Edmund Clarence Stedman · −0.3695 + 0.2821i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  2. Wilfred Owen · −0.3447 + 0.2869i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.3271 + 0.3087i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  4. Hart Crane · −0.3268 + 0.3169i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  5. Aphra Behn · −0.3397 + 0.3461i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
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