Poem fractal

Homer

by Hartley Coleridge

19 September 1796 to 6 January 1849 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The world is not to me a barren wilderness; but it is a garden, thick planted indeed, but planted with forbidden fruit, and guarded by dragons.”

Portraying life as abundant with attraction yet constrained by prohibition · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1829

More remarks (49)

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. William Wordsworth · −0.5376 + 0.7381i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.5610 + 0.7441i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edmund Spenser · −0.5338 + 0.7381i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emma Lazarus · −0.5301 + 0.7373i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.5357 + 0.7566i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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