Poem fractal

Ave Maria Gratia Plena

by Oscar Wilde

16 October 1854 to 30 November 1900 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”

Reducing moral judgement to personal aversion · Play, An Ideal Husband

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. Alfred Austin · −0.1257 + 0.5476i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Wordsworth · −0.1114 + 0.5648i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Frost · −0.1173 + 0.5154i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charlotte Smith · −0.1083 + 0.5734i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nixon Waterman · −0.1380 + 0.5303i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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