Poem fractal

The Louer Refused of His Loue Imbraceth Death

by Richard Tottel

c. 1528 to 2 July 1593 (~65)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“How unperfect the books of the laws of England were before, what price the scarceness had raised, the most part marvelously mangled, and no small part no where to be gotten.”

On restoring legal texts that scarcity and bad copying had ruined · Printer's preface to gentlemen studious of the laws of England

More remarks (7)

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. Joshua Sylvester · 1.0929 + 0.7883i · 0.184 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Sorley · 0.7110 + 0.8223i · 0.202 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edmund William Gosse · 0.8037 + 0.6412i · 0.215 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir Thomas Wyatt · 0.7212 + 0.6424i · 0.265 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Donne · 0.6545 + 0.7264i · 0.277 away · Compare side by side
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