Poem fractal

Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
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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. Walt Whitman · −0.4127 + 1.0213i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  2. Banjo Paterson · −0.4792 + 1.0240i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edward Thomas · −0.4323 + 1.0684i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alexander Pope · −0.4700 + 0.9789i · 0.057 away · Compare side by side
  5. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.3890 + 1.0064i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
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