Poem fractal

To Celia pleading want of Merit

by Thomas Stanley

3 September 1625 to 12 April 1678 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“He who rests satisfied with the general relation of affairs, not fixing upon some eminent actor in that story, loseth its greatest benefit.”

Stanley argues that individual lives make history more immediate and instructive. · Preface, The History of Philosophy, 1655

More remarks (13)

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. George Edward Woodberry · 0.1176 − 0.4758i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · 0.1136 − 0.4792i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · 0.1312 − 0.4912i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ezra Pound · 0.0961 − 0.4718i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Burns · 0.1711 − 0.4603i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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