Poem fractal

The Rain Is Falling

by William Sidney Walker

4 December 1795 to 15 October 1846 (~51)

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.0820 + 0.8727i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Louise Imogen Guiney · −0.0666 + 0.8689i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hood · −0.0432 + 0.9047i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · −0.0614 + 0.9314i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Chatterton · −0.0762 + 0.8425i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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