Poem fractal

Coronach, or Death-Wail

by Charles Mackay

27 March 1814 to 24 December 1889 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses one by one.”

Emphasising the difficulty of resisting collective error · Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, preface

More remarks (4)

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. Henry Carey · 0.1403 − 0.5149i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Burns · 0.1410 − 0.5304i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Herrick · 0.1330 − 0.5174i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  4. Katherine Philips · 0.1408 − 0.5332i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alice Meynell · 0.1561 − 0.5372i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
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