Poem fractal

Jealousy

by Charles Tennyson Turner

4 July 1808 to 25 April 1879 (~71)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Good wishes in crowds from me I despatch on dove’s wing to you.”

Sending affectionate congratulations in a characteristically fanciful image · Letter on Alfred Tennyson’s marriage, 1850

More remarks (39)

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 Wordsworth · −0.2052 + 0.7667i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alfred Lord Tennyson · −0.2071 + 0.7724i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · −0.1831 + 0.7910i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Hartley Coleridge · −0.2050 + 0.7503i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · −0.2119 + 0.7482i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content