Poem fractal

Annabel Lee

by Edgar Allan Poe

19 January 1809 to 7 October 1849 (~40)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.”

Presenting beauty as poetry’s central and distinctive purpose · Essay, The Poetic Principle

More remarks (39)

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. Dylan Thomas · 0.0141 − 0.1368i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. F. S. Flint · 0.0249 − 0.1353i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Rupert Brooke · 0.0254 − 0.1375i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mark Alexander Boyd · 0.0335 − 0.1513i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  5. Mary Coleridge · 0.0230 − 0.1643i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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