Poem fractal

Revenge

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

14 August 1802 to 15 October 1838 (~36)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Praise—actual personal praise—oftener frets and embarrasses than it encourages. It is too small when too near.”

Noting the uncomfortable difference between fame and personal praise · Essay, On the Character of Mrs. Hemans's Writings

More remarks (38)

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 0.0032 − 0.7119i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. Rupert Brooke · 0.0027 − 0.7048i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Edmondstoune Aytoun · 0.0215 − 0.7045i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Carl Sandburg · −0.0027 − 0.7301i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Anna Lætitia Barbauld · 0.0178 − 0.7284i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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