Poem fractal

There is an awful quiet in the air

by Hartley Coleridge

19 September 1796 to 6 January 1849 (~53)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I can give no comfort which his Christian mind will not better supply, and to attempt to divert, while the wound is young, is impertinent mockery.”

Rejecting shallow distraction as a response to fresh grief · Letter to Mrs Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 21 August 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. Ernest Dowson · 0.2667 + 0.6011i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  2. Walt Whitman · 0.2844 + 0.6260i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.3208 + 0.6175i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Shakespeare · 0.2885 + 0.6377i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward Thomas · 0.2591 + 0.5548i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
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