Poem fractal

The Affliction of Margaret

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There is also a meditative, as well as a human, pathos; an enthusiastic, as well as an ordinary, sorrow.”

Recognising contemplative forms of sorrow beyond immediate personal grief · 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. John Clare · −0.0843 − 0.3733i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.1121 − 0.3883i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar A. Guest · −0.1094 − 0.3973i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Stanley · −0.0836 − 0.4080i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. W. H. Davies · −0.0595 − 0.3853i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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