Poem fractal

Songs of Experience Introduction

by William Blake

28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Jesus & his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists.”

The gospel circle is claimed as a company of makers · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

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. Thomas Hardy · −0.2832 − 0.8576i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.2750 − 0.8633i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ford Madox Hueffer · −0.2639 − 0.8659i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amy Levy · −0.3114 − 0.8546i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Bartlet · −0.2903 − 0.8346i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content