Poem fractal

In my Solitary houres in my dear husband his Absence

by Anne Bradstreet

1612 to 16 September 1672 (~60)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending.”

Offering a compact view of the changing purposes of life · Prose meditation (Meditations Divine and Moral)

More remarks (4)

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. Richard Lovelace · 0.0468 − 0.8120i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lady Nairne · 0.0622 − 0.8128i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.0364 − 0.8041i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 0.0648 − 0.8083i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Arthur Larkin · 0.0536 − 0.7947i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
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