Poem fractal

A Dirge

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am working away at copying Mamma's contingent of Gabriel's letters — such good old letters some of them, so loving — and some so funny. It is a sad task, though one I like to perform.”

Preserving family letters becomes both an act of love and an encounter with grief · Letter to Lucy Rossetti, autumn 1882

More remarks (60)

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. Thomas Moore · −0.5170 − 0.1586i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  2. Philip Arthur Larkin · −0.5004 − 0.1326i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Banjo Paterson · −0.5378 − 0.0862i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Bailey Aldrich · −0.5043 − 0.1005i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.5816 − 0.1170i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
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