Poem fractal

Love and Jealousy

by William Walsh

6 October 1662 to 15 March 1708 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There ought to be the same difference observed between pastorals and elegies as between the life of the country and the court.”

A plain rule for matching manner to the life the poem pretends to · Preface to Letters and Poems, Amorous and Gallant, 1692

More remarks (8)

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 Blake · −0.1851 + 0.2125i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. James Clarence Mangan · −0.1905 + 0.2106i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Graham · −0.1919 + 0.2123i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.1599 + 0.2147i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Mary Webb · −0.1816 + 0.1961i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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