Poem fractal

Valiant Love

by Richard Lovelace

1617 to 1657 (~40)

Browse poets 678

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. William Broome · 0.0382 + 0.2485i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · 0.0207 + 0.2620i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  3. Joanna Baillie · 0.0551 + 0.2205i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.0282 + 0.2185i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edward de Vere · 0.0753 + 0.2809i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
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