Poem fractal

Fabien Dei Franchi

by Oscar Wilde

16 October 1854 to 30 November 1900 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”

Tracing the typical progression of filial feeling · Play, A Woman of No Importance

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. Charles Bertram Johnson · −0.6981 + 0.8052i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.6352 + 0.7759i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  3. Charlotte Smith · −0.6914 + 0.7503i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Hood · −0.6985 + 0.7338i · 0.063 away · Compare side by side
  5. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.7431 + 0.7763i · 0.069 away · Compare side by side
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