Poem fractal

When last we parted

by William Lisle Bowles

24 September 1762 to 7 April 1850 (~88)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Those who have attained the highest rank in poetry, as Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton, will be found invariably to have drawn their poetical imagery more from nature than from art.”

The central claim of his long controversy over Pope and poetic rank · The Invariable Principles of Poetry, letter to Thomas Campbell, 1819

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. Rudyard Kipling · 0.1509 + 0.7737i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · 0.1422 + 0.7193i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1137 + 0.7485i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Philpot · 0.1303 + 0.7924i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Shakespeare · 0.1149 + 0.7340i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
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