Poem fractal

The Chimney-Sweeper

by William Blake

28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Art is the Tree of Life. Science is the Tree of Death.”

A stark pairing of living image against a knowledge that kills vision · 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. William Butler Yeats · 0.0845 − 0.2386i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  2. Abraham Cowley · 0.0655 − 0.2947i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna Wahlert McCourt · 0.0861 − 0.2328i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard Edwardes · 0.0321 − 0.2595i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  5. Siegfried Sassoon · 0.0350 − 0.2386i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
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