Poem fractal

The Fairies

by William Allingham

19 March 1824 to 18 November 1889 (~65)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have been an Official all my life, without the least turn for it. I never could attain a true official manner, which is highly artificial and handles trifles with ludicrously disproportionate gravity.”

Reflecting on the artificial gravity demanded by bureaucratic life · Diary

More remarks (3)

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. Christina Rossetti · −0.4331 − 0.7279i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. D. H. Lawrence · −0.4223 − 0.7344i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Vance Cheney · −0.4147 − 0.7290i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Oscar Wilde · −0.4484 − 0.7376i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Blake · −0.4491 − 0.7246i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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