Poem fractal

The Mother's Call

by Allan Cunningham

7 December 1784 to 30 October 1842 (~58)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I would not lie like a toad in a stone, or in a place strong enough for another to covet. Oh! no; let me lie where the green grass and the daisies grow, waving under the winds of the blue heaven.”

Preferring a simple natural resting place over a grand tomb · Conversation with Sir Francis Chantrey

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. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.1944 + 0.0868i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Cartwright · −0.1914 + 0.0961i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2284 + 0.0854i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. Richard Lovelace · −0.2128 + 0.0718i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Chatterton · −0.1899 + 0.0875i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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