Poem fractal

The Lily

by William Blake

28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.”

Truth lives in the minute instance, not in the sweeping category · Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.6435 − 0.0825i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ernest Dowson · −0.6049 − 0.1051i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.6125 − 0.1167i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. T. Sturge Moore · −0.6562 − 0.0617i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · −0.5881 − 0.0871i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
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