Poem fractal

Winter Nightfall

by Robert Bridges

23 October 1844 to 21 April 1930 (~86)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The essence of poetry is that it should be written for the ear.”

Emphasising sound and listening as central to poetic experience · Essay on poetry

More remarks (44)

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. Emily Dickinson · −0.3385 − 1.1382i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edward Thomas · −0.3502 − 1.1369i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  3. George O'Neil · −0.3118 − 1.1051i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.3741 − 1.1559i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Herrick · −0.3372 − 1.0775i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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