Poem fractal

My heart leaps up when I behold

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I yield to none in love for my art. I, therefore, labour at it with reverence, affection, and industry.”

Presenting poetic craft as disciplined labour grounded in devotion to art · Conversation, recorded by Christopher Wordsworth

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. Pierre de Ronsard · 0.5062 − 0.4346i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alice Corbin · 0.5244 − 0.4441i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.5316 − 0.4718i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ernest Dowson · 0.4311 − 0.4480i · 0.056 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · 0.5167 − 0.4186i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
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