Poem fractal

Mare Serenitatis

by William Bell Scott

12 September 1811 to 22 November 1890 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We become more self-centred as we get old, and our environment, the scenery of life, becomes more important.”

Observing how ageing can deepen inwardness and attachment to surroundings · Autobiographical Notes, Vol. II, Chapter XIX

More remarks (39)

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. Dylan Thomas · 0.0439 − 0.4563i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Walter Savage Landor · 0.0550 − 0.4617i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Joshua Henry Jones · 0.0476 − 0.4800i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Brontë · 0.0411 − 0.4884i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Theodore Henry Shackelford · 0.0118 − 0.4664i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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