Poem fractal

Werena my Heart licht I wad dee

by Lady Grizel Baillie

25 December 1665 to 6 December 1746 (~81)

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. Douglas Malloch · 0.4865 − 0.1343i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. A. Milne · 0.4794 − 0.1364i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Clifford Bax · 0.4329 − 0.1360i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  4. Paul Verlaine · 0.5122 − 0.0787i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · 0.5225 − 0.1645i · 0.057 away · Compare side by side
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