Poem fractal

A Ballad by the Lord Dorset when at Sea

by Charles Sackville

24 January 1643 to 29 January 1706 (~63)

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. James Joyce · 0.3113 − 0.5603i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Love Peacock · 0.2998 − 0.5258i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Allan Poe · 0.3384 − 0.5817i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · 0.2888 − 0.5556i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Bartlet · 0.3809 − 0.5068i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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