Poem fractal

Awake, my soul!

by Anna Lætitia Barbauld

20 June 1743 to 9 March 1825 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The mind is not passive in the reception of knowledge, but active in its pursuit.”

Presenting learning as an active exercise of the mind · Educational prose, commonly attributed

More remarks (3)

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. Emily Dickinson · 0.0382 − 0.5216i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Kenyon · 0.0394 − 0.5284i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anne Whitney · 0.0487 − 0.5163i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mary Coleridge · 0.0469 − 0.4973i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0486 − 0.5366i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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