Poem fractal

The Relapse

by Thomas Stanley

3 September 1625 to 12 April 1678 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The History of Philosophy containing the lives, opinions, actions and discourses of the philosophers of every sect.”

The formulation captures Stanley's unusually biographical conception of philosophical history. · Title and description, 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. Christina Rossetti · −0.0368 − 0.7290i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. George Orwell · −0.0060 − 0.6941i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Davidson · −0.0558 − 0.7069i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir Charles Sedley · −0.0170 − 0.6789i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Herrick · −0.0330 − 0.7339i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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