Poem fractal

Fairy Sketch

by William Lisle Bowles

24 September 1762 to 7 April 1850 (~88)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Images drawn from nature are poetically finer than those drawn from art.”

The brief formula that set him against Byron, Campbell and the Pope party · Critical writings on Pope and the principles of poetry

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. Edwin Arlington Robinson · −0.2151 − 0.0215i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hilaire Belloc · −0.2274 − 0.0311i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Jean Ingelow · −0.2023 − 0.0164i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Helen Hunt Jackson · −0.2108 − 0.0345i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. Claude McKay · −0.2375 + 0.0037i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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