Poem fractal

The Lamp

by Charles Whitehead

4 October 1804 to 5 July 1862 (~58)

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. Wilfred Owen · −0.5679 + 0.1974i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · −0.5854 + 0.2060i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. Wilfred Owen · −0.5754 + 0.2184i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.5580 + 0.2010i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.5699 + 0.1777i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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