Poem fractal

To a Young Ass

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order”

A homely distinction that has become a classic definition of poetic language · Table Talk, 12 July 1827

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. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.3006 + 1.1384i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Hardy · −0.2999 + 1.1062i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3758 + 1.0910i · 0.059 away · Compare side by side
  4. Dylan Thomas · −0.3472 + 1.0754i · 0.060 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.3682 + 1.0736i · 0.069 away · Compare side by side
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