Poem fractal

To the Willow-Tree

by Robert Herrick

24 August 1591 to 15 October 1674 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“To read a poem is to hear the voice of the poet speaking across the years.”

Presenting poetry as intimate communication across time · Essay and preface material, commonly attributed

More remarks (5)

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. James Joyce · −0.3273 − 0.6488i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.3246 − 0.6545i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. Hart Crane · −0.3283 − 0.6649i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Burns · −0.3457 − 0.6646i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Ernest Henley · −0.3199 − 0.6551i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
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