Poem fractal

Three Men of Gotham

by Thomas Love Peacock

18 October 1785 to 23 January 1866 (~81)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“England is the modern Carthage; the love of gold, the last corruption of man, pervades the whole state from the centre to the extremities.”

Denunciation of commercial greed as national decay · Letter (1809)

More remarks (7)

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 0.2907 − 0.5032i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · 0.2888 − 0.5556i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  3. Mina Loy · 0.2870 − 0.4944i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Joyce · 0.3113 − 0.5603i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Sackville · 0.3354 − 0.5333i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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