Poem fractal

The Angel

by William Blake

28 November 1757 to 12 August 1827 (~70)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We are all co-existent with God — members of the Divine body. We are all partakers of the Divine nature.”

Human life is spoken of as already inside the divine, not approaching it from outside · Conversation recorded by Henry Crabb Robinson

More remarks (86)

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. Mina Loy · 0.2130 − 0.7296i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · 0.1951 − 0.7186i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. A. A. Milne · 0.2183 − 0.7350i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.2052 − 0.7100i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Randolph · 0.2259 − 0.7355i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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