Poem fractal

To the Autumnal Moon

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“When a man mistakes his thoughts for persons and things, he is mad.”

Defining madness as the collapse of the boundary between thought and reality · Table Talk, 25 July 1832

More remarks (70)

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. Alfred Douglas · −0.5111 + 0.1035i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Stephen Hawes · −0.5182 + 0.0957i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Alexander · −0.4936 + 0.1020i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. · −0.5273 + 0.1322i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan · −0.5275 + 0.0891i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content