Poem fractal

Joan o' the Wad

by Nora Hopper Chesson

2 January 1871 to 14 April 1906 (~35)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“English Christmas-keepers would do well to borrow from their neighbours in the Netherlands and in Austria-Hungary.”

Welcoming worthwhile traditions regardless of national origin · 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. Thomas Paine · −0.2798 + 0.0717i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Anna Lætitia Barbauld · −0.2804 + 0.0883i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Louis MacNeice · −0.2524 + 0.0763i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.2654 + 0.0956i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Godfrey · −0.2441 + 0.0636i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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