Poem fractal

The Redbreast and the Butterfly

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.”

on the necessity of educating readers to meet genuine originality · Essay, Supplementary to the Preface, 1815

More remarks (44)

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. Hart Crane · −0.2618 − 0.1006i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. George O'Neil · −0.2410 − 0.0947i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2471 − 0.1118i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edward Thomas · −0.2652 − 0.1008i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  5. T. E. Brown · −0.2577 − 0.0859i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
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