Poem fractal

The Phoenix

by George Darley

December 1795 to 23 November 1846 (~51)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Fashionability is a kind of elevated vulgarity.”

A sharp dismissal of mere fashionable taste · Introduction to Works of Beaumont and Fletcher (1862 edition)

More remarks (1)

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. W. H. Davies · −0.4294 − 0.6534i · 0.001 away · Compare side by side
  2. Patrick Reginald Chalmers · −0.4265 − 0.6496i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  3. Paul Laurence Dunbar · −0.4233 − 0.6626i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Hart Crane · −0.4355 − 0.6643i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  5. T. S. Eliot · −0.4356 − 0.6699i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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