Poem fractal

The Blackbird

by William Ernest Henley

23 August 1849 to 11 July 1903 (~54)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.”

Defining art as a concentrated revelation of reality · Essay, George Meredith

More remarks (51)

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. James Weldon Johnson · −0.4533 − 0.5079i · 0.007 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Stuart Blackie · −0.4682 − 0.5076i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. George Chapman · −0.4609 − 0.5244i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.4767 − 0.5136i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. David Melvill · −0.4782 − 0.5080i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
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