Poem fractal

Limbo

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 to 25 July 1834 (~62)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am never very forward in offering spiritual consolation to any one in distress or disease. I believe that such resources, to be of any service, must be self-evolved in the first instance.”

Preferring inward spiritual growth over externally imposed consolation · Table Talk, 20 August 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. Banjo Paterson · −0.4314 + 1.1756i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Banjo Paterson · −0.4174 + 1.1580i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · −0.3983 + 1.2069i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edward Thomas · −0.4756 + 1.1850i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
  5. Cale Young Rice · −0.3824 + 1.1930i · 0.052 away · Compare side by side
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