Poem fractal

Fond ladds that spend so fast your poasting time

by Giles Fletcher

c. 1586 to 1623 (~37)

Browse poets 678

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. Henry Timrod · 0.0197 + 0.5957i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lizette Woodworth Reese · 0.0255 + 0.6145i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · 0.0369 + 0.6104i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.0007 + 0.5568i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Clarence Mangan · −0.0061 + 0.6363i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
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