Poem fractal

The Author's Life

by Robert Fergusson

5 September 1750 to 16 October 1774 (~24)

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. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan · −0.3186 − 0.4497i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Charles Tennyson Turner · −0.2854 − 0.4573i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Richard · −0.3224 − 0.4453i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mark Akenside · −0.2851 − 0.4624i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey · −0.2899 − 0.4291i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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