Poem fractal

Virginia Stocks

by Nora Hopper Chesson

2 January 1871 to 14 April 1906 (~35)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Anticipating the clamorous open hands of turncock, postman, fireman, butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker that will knock on the morrow at his door.”

A vivid comic glimpse of Boxing Day expectations in Victorian life · 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. Letitia Elizabeth Landon · −0.3326 − 0.1089i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Matthew Arnold · −0.3354 − 0.1208i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3171 − 0.1122i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Masefield · −0.3492 − 0.0931i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Arthur Hugh Clough · −0.3384 − 0.1345i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content