Poem fractal

On My Birthday, July 21

by Matthew Prior

c. July 1664 to 18 September 1721 (~57)

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. Gerald Massey · 0.1406 − 0.2031i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. E. Nesbit · 0.0959 − 0.2184i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.0985 − 0.2284i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Hardy · 0.1737 − 0.1781i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
  5. Wallace Stevens · 0.1695 − 0.1672i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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