Poem fractal

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by William Lisle Bowles

24 September 1762 to 7 April 1850 (~88)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“But there is a great difference between natural and fabricated feelings, even in poetry.”

A brief critical axiom from his defence of the early sonnets as lived emotion · Preface to the Sonnets, 1805

More remarks (18)

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. Richard · −0.4446 + 0.7502i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lady Jane Wilde · −0.4607 + 0.7545i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · −0.4059 + 0.7434i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sir Aubrey de Vere · −0.4320 + 0.7852i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · −0.4613 + 0.7250i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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