Poem fractal

Pantheon

by Lucian B. Watkins

25 May 1879 to 2 February 1921 (~42)

Browse poets 678

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 · −0.1937 + 0.3245i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Keats · −0.1852 + 0.3122i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · −0.1926 + 0.3020i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Drinkwater · −0.1743 + 0.3067i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Sir Walter Raleigh · −0.1896 + 0.2954i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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