Poem fractal

To Thomas Clarkson

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Poets do not write for Poets alone, but for men.”

Insisting that poetry belongs to ordinary human life · 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. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.3451 + 0.4570i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Maxwell Bodenheim · −0.3625 + 0.4439i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.3716 + 0.4442i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.3970 + 0.4462i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.3966 + 0.4445i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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