Poem fractal

To the River Otter

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, which I fear has gone on for an hour without any stop at all.”

A wry self-awareness of his own conversational flow · Table Talk, 29 June 1833

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. Anna Hempstead Branch · −0.5020 + 0.8874i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alfred Austin · −0.5574 + 0.8461i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  3. Jonathan Swift · −0.5647 + 0.9184i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alan Seeger · −0.4836 + 0.8335i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Lisle Bowles · −0.5412 + 0.8062i · 0.065 away · Compare side by side
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