Poem fractal

On Her Vanity

by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

17 August 1840 to 10 September 1922 (~82)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Of doing good in the world in any public way I also despair.”

A stark admission of disillusionment with public action · Diary, 13 October 1889

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. Lizette Woodworth Reese · 0.0255 + 0.6145i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Butler Yeats · 0.0481 + 0.6291i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Timrod · 0.0197 + 0.5957i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Giles Fletcher · 0.0092 + 0.5962i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · 0.0694 + 0.6170i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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