Poem fractal

Loss and Gain

by Richard Monckton Milnes

19 June 1809 to 11 August 1885 (~76)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I do not conceive that any criticism, with such liveliness and liberty as makes criticism at all amusing, would be suitable at a meeting of this kind.”

Treating lively criticism as something requiring freedom as well as judgement · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

More remarks (27)

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. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · 0.0979 + 0.9161i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · 0.1059 + 0.9588i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  3. Isaac Rosenberg · 0.1242 + 0.9751i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Blake · 0.0624 + 0.9045i · 0.065 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar Lee Masters · 0.1336 + 0.8647i · 0.068 away · Compare side by side
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