Poem fractal

To a Cat

by Hartley Coleridge

19 September 1796 to 6 January 1849 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The very fact that the All good should have permitted such an intellect to fall into confusion, proves how little we ought to value ourselves on intellectual endowments, apart from our moral use of them.”

Placing moral use above intellectual brilliance as the true measure of worth · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 6 November 1836

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. Mary Webb · 0.0035 + 0.8016i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hood · −0.0320 + 0.7567i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0418 + 0.7511i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
  4. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt · −0.0217 + 0.7185i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.0439 + 0.7427i · 0.057 away · Compare side by side
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