Poem fractal

Another year!—another deadly blow!

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge—it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

Claiming an enduring place for poetry in human experience · Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1802

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 · −0.4353 + 0.6507i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Oscar Wilde · −0.4625 + 0.6387i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Keats · −0.4624 + 0.6582i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Williams Buchanan · −0.4732 + 0.6296i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.4565 + 0.6096i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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