Poem fractal

The Bargain

by Sir Philip Sidney

30 November 1554 to 17 October 1586 (~32)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner.”

Story can command attention across ages · Essay, The Defence of Poesy

More remarks (12)

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. Wallace Stevens · 0.3483 + 0.2732i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  2. George Peele · 0.3185 + 0.2777i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  3. Marianne Moore · 0.3909 + 0.3032i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  4. D. H. Lawrence · 0.3532 + 0.3494i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Shakespeare · 0.3597 + 0.2635i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
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