Poem fractal

The Fair Singer

by Andrew Marvell

31 March 1621 to 16 August 1678 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There being scarce any spectacle more pleasing to God and Man then to see the proud humbled.”

A characteristic Marvellian pleasure in seeing arrogance brought low · The Rehearsal Transpros'd: The Second Part

More remarks (9)

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 Donne · 0.0411 − 0.0718i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0406 − 0.0496i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · 0.0392 − 0.0861i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Genevieve Taggard · 0.0760 − 0.0710i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Traherne · 0.0741 − 0.0427i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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