Poem fractal

Men call you fayre

by Edmund Spenser

c. 1552 to 13 January 1599 (~47)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“To some I know this method will seem displeasing, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large.”

Defending allegory as a persuasive form of moral instruction · Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, prefatory to The Faerie Queene

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. D. H. Lawrence · 0.6328 + 0.7448i · 0.065 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Donne · 0.6545 + 0.7264i · 0.065 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edmund Spenser · 0.5336 + 0.6601i · 0.074 away · Compare side by side
  4. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · 0.5598 + 0.6134i · 0.086 away · Compare side by side
  5. Max Ehrmann · 0.5756 + 0.7845i · 0.100 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content