Poem fractal

The Peddler

by Charlotte Mew

15 November 1869 to 24 March 1928 (~59)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I'm burning up my work. I don't know what else to do with it.”

Reflecting her fierce self-criticism and habit of destroying manuscripts · Conversation with Alida Monro

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. Joanna Baillie · 0.0551 + 0.2205i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0282 + 0.2185i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.0284 + 0.1863i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard · 0.0783 + 0.2035i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edgar A. Guest · 0.0605 + 0.1661i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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