Poem fractal

The Visionary

by Emily Brontë

30 July 1818 to 19 December 1848 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have a good many books on hand, but I am sorry to say that as usual I make small progress with any.”

A candid admission familiar to anyone distracted among too many books · Diary paper, 30 July 1841

More remarks (11)

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. William Lisle Bowles · −0.3333 + 0.4282i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Maxwell Bodenheim · −0.3625 + 0.4439i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. David Melvill · −0.3245 + 0.4212i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.3608 + 0.4035i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.3451 + 0.4570i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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