Poem fractal

The Little Black Boy

by William Blake

28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind.”

Fixed opinion stagnates into mental disease · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

More remarks (86)

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. Elizabeth Devereux · −0.0525 − 0.0127i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hart Crane · −0.0259 − 0.0403i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · −0.0368 − 0.0446i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0549 − 0.0027i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.0127 − 0.0371i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
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