Poem fractal

Time, Real and Imaginary

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.”

A characteristically sharp remark on the asymmetry of desire · Table Talk, 23 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. Hart Crane · −0.3268 + 0.3169i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.3271 + 0.3087i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  3. Mathilde Blind · −0.3049 + 0.2893i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas MacDonagh · −0.3267 + 0.3606i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.3088 + 0.2894i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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