Poem fractal

The Chrysoberyl

by Nora Hopper Chesson

2 January 1871 to 14 April 1906 (~35)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Nor need we flinch from the pretty Cornish fancy that at midnight on Christmas night all water turns into wine.”

Delighting in folklore without demanding literal belief in it · Essay, Christmas Customs, English Illustrated Magazine, 1899

More remarks (33)

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. John Scott · −0.2093 + 0.0072i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. W. H. Davies · −0.2075 + 0.0142i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Claude McKay · −0.2375 + 0.0037i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Lisle Bowles · −0.2234 − 0.0164i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2226 + 0.0371i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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