Poem fractal

Weep no more

by John Fletcher

20 December 1579 to 29 August 1625 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Thus much I hope will serve to justify my poem, and make you understand it; to teach you more for nothing, I do not know that I am in conscience bound.”

A witty assertion of the author's limits when confronted with readers who have misunderstood his work · Preface, To the Reader

More remarks (3)

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. Now
    Dylan Thomas · −0.2072 − 0.2951i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2176 − 0.2903i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2151 − 0.3013i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar A. Guest · −0.1879 − 0.2808i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Bunyan · −0.2260 − 0.3004i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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