Poem fractal

Orion

by Charles Tennyson Turner

4 July 1808 to 25 April 1879 (~71)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In spite of my apparent unsociability I have not forgot Halton, nor the older home at Spilsby.”

Acknowledging the lasting hold of places associated with youth and friendship · Letter to Hardwicke Rawnsley, 1872

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. Elizabeth Barrett Browning · −0.6186 + 0.7366i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Witter Bynner · −0.6142 + 0.7209i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.5990 + 0.7516i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Austin · −0.6139 + 0.7007i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.5985 + 0.7648i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
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