Poem fractal

Against Indifference

by Charles Webbe

c. 1650 to c. 1680 (~30)

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. William Walsh · 0.4645 − 0.5608i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Blake · 0.4518 − 0.5490i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Percy Bysshe Shelley · 0.4423 − 0.5538i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Arthur Symons · 0.5162 − 0.5701i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 0.4636 − 0.6232i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
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