Poem fractal

A Fly Caught in a Cobweb

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. Allan Cunningham · −0.2099 + 0.0911i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2284 + 0.0854i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.1944 + 0.0868i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Eugene Field · −0.2079 + 0.0466i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Chatterton · −0.1899 + 0.0875i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
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