Poem fractal

Milton, In Age

by William Lisle Bowles

24 September 1762 to 7 April 1850 (~88)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“They can be considered in no other light than as exhibiting occasional reflections which naturally arose in his mind, chiefly during various excursions, undertaken to relieve, at the time, depression of spirits.”

He presents the early sonnets as private feeling prompted by travel rather than as studied literary display · Preface to the Sonnets, ninth edition, 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. William Lisle Bowles · −0.5505 + 0.8059i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Cullen Bryant · −0.5446 + 0.7896i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.5170 + 0.7933i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Austin · −0.5574 + 0.8461i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  5. Carl Sandburg · −0.5170 + 0.7635i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
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