Poem fractal

The Children Band

by Sir Aubrey de Vere

28 August 1788 to 5 July 1846 (~58)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The poet's function is not to describe nature, but to interpret it.”

Emphasising the poet's role as an interpreter of experience rather than a mere recorder of appearances. · Essay on poetry

More remarks (5)

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. John Keats · −0.3166 + 0.6291i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · −0.3051 + 0.6456i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Richard · −0.3463 + 0.6323i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · −0.2961 + 0.6607i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Eunice Tietjens · −0.2894 + 0.6573i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content