Poem fractal

Confessions

by Robert Browning

7 May 1812 to 12 December 1889 (~77)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A poet's affair is with God, to whom he is accountable, and of whom is his reward: look elsewhere, and you find misery enough.”

Defending the poet's inward accountability against demands for easy clarity · Letter to John Ruskin, 10 December 1855

More remarks (16)

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. John Clare · 0.0788 − 0.4825i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. May
    Christina Rossetti · 0.0862 − 0.4632i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ezra Pound · 0.0961 − 0.4718i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Walter Savage Landor · 0.0550 − 0.4617i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Joshua Henry Jones · 0.0476 − 0.4800i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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