Poem fractal

Faith

by Ada Cambridge

21 November 1844 to 19 July 1926 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Evidently it is in the eye (backed by a strong imagination) of the gazer that poetic beauty lies.”

Locating poetic beauty partly in imagination rather than solely in the object observed · Memoir, The Retrospect (1912)

More remarks (39)

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 Byrd · −0.0218 + 0.1221i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edwin Markham · −0.0150 + 0.1096i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hood · −0.0423 + 0.1324i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Oldham · −0.0660 + 0.1165i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. G. K. Chesterton · −0.0103 + 0.0877i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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