Poem fractal

Phantom

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.”

Insisting that true poetic power rests on depth of thought as well as feeling · Biographia Literaria, Chapter XV

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. Sir Lewis Morris · −0.4786 − 0.3585i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard Aldington · −0.4531 − 0.3777i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Christina Rossetti · −0.4519 − 0.3694i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.4854 − 0.3616i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  5. Madison Julius Cawein · −0.4598 − 0.3886i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
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