Poem fractal

Prayer for Indifference

by Fanny Greville

c. 1724 to 28 July 1789 (~65)

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. Thomas Bateson · 0.0550 − 0.6796i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hart Crane · 0.0285 − 0.6966i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · 0.0285 − 0.6811i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Skinner · 0.0252 − 0.6873i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0615 − 0.6902i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
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