Poem fractal

Meeting

by George Crabbe

24 December 1754 to 3 February 1832 (~78)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A great lie is like a great fish on dry land; it may fret and fling and make a frightful bother, but it cannot hurt you. You have only to keep still, and it will die of itself.”

On the self-defeating nature of falsehood when left unprovoked · Attributed in Day's Collacon

More remarks (1)

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 · −0.2331 + 0.1925i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Donne · −0.2324 + 0.1908i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · −0.2309 + 0.1734i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ernest Dowson · −0.2745 + 0.2010i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2794 + 0.1733i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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