Poem fractal

To My Wife

by Oscar Wilde

16 October 1854 to 30 November 1900 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Hearts are made to be broken.”

Accepting sorrow as an essential part of love · Letter, De Profundis

More remarks (97)

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. Emily Dickinson · 0.2945 − 0.9948i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · 0.2709 − 0.9868i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ernest Dowson · 0.2883 − 0.9733i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 0.3477 − 0.9772i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alfred Austin · 0.3076 − 1.0893i · 0.068 away · Compare side by side
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