Poem fractal

I thank thee God, that I have lived

by Elizabeth Craven

17 December 1750 to 13 January 1828 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The greatest part of the public has my permission to doze over the following sheets, as I expose them to the malice of my enemies, without reserve, merely to oblige many of my friends.”

Ironic, confident dismissal of potential critics while offering her travel letters to friends · Preface, A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople (1789)

More remarks (1)

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. Katherine Philips · −0.1734 + 0.5703i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Frederick Tennyson · −0.1650 + 0.5584i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.1982 + 0.5752i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.1562 + 0.5571i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.1626 + 0.5335i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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