Poem fractal

The Blind Beggar

by Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 to 22 January 1945 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Literature is tied by that which gives it wings.”

A compact paradox on language as both burden and flight · Introduction, Studies in Prose and Verse

More remarks (31)

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. James Elroy Flecker · −0.2943 + 0.1499i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2794 + 0.1733i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · −0.2898 + 0.1406i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.3114 + 0.1545i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson · −0.2639 + 0.1523i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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