Poem fractal

The Hackney Coachman

by Hannah More

2 February 1745 to 7 September 1833 (~88)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Those who are pleased with flattery must be ignorant of their own merit.”

Warning that dependence on praise may reveal insecurity rather than excellence · Essay / moral writing

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. Gerard Manley Hopkins · 0.0558 + 0.3030i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Donne · 0.0374 + 0.3251i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · 0.0261 + 0.3142i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.0722 + 0.3455i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  5. Sara Teasdale · 0.0072 + 0.2972i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
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