Poem fractal

When I am dead, my dearest

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Come what will I am in Better Hands than either yours or my own; I desire to realize and to rest in this.”

Her response to grave illness centres on trust rather than control · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 20 May 1892

More remarks (60)

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. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3760 − 0.6947i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Dickinson · −0.3695 − 0.7056i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Sharp · −0.3613 − 0.6941i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ezra Pound · −0.4019 − 0.6841i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Arthur Larkin · −0.4035 − 0.7125i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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