Poem fractal

Love's Trappist

by G. K. Chesterton

29 May 1874 to 14 June 1936 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.”

Presenting education as the living continuity between generations · Prose book

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. William Cullen Bryant · −0.1980 + 0.1663i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.2200 + 0.1728i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.2209 + 0.1744i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2062 + 0.1541i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Donne · −0.1986 + 0.1512i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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