Poem fractal

The Harlot's House

by Oscar Wilde

16 October 1854 to 30 November 1900 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

Describing the isolated privilege of vision · Essay, The Critic as Artist

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. Felicia Dorothea Hemans · −0.3729 − 0.6393i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hart Crane · −0.3709 − 0.6438i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Herman Melville · −0.3970 − 0.6538i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.4042 − 0.6426i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Lewis Carroll · −0.3907 − 0.6179i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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