Poem fractal

Enquiry After Happiness

by Thomas Chatterton

20 November 1752 to 24 August 1770 (~18)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I give my Abstinence to the Company at the Sheriffs Annual Feast in general, more particularly the Aldermen.”

A dry joke at the expense of civic feasting and indulgence · Last Will and Testament, 14 April 1770

More remarks (39)

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 Edward Dyer · −0.1320 + 0.4126i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. Paul Laurence Dunbar · −0.1142 + 0.4109i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.1464 + 0.4046i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lord Byron · −0.1244 + 0.4283i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. A. A. Milne · −0.1227 + 0.3824i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content