Poem fractal

We Have Been Friends Together

by Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan

22 March 1808 to 15 June 1877 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The law gives the husband the custody of the children, and the right to decide where they shall live, and how they shall be educated.”

Exposing the unequal distribution of parental authority within marriage · Essay on the legal rights of women

More remarks (4)

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. Richard · −0.3224 − 0.4453i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Clare · −0.3252 − 0.4503i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Cullen Bryant · −0.3234 − 0.4346i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Fergusson · −0.3018 − 0.4484i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.3362 − 0.4563i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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