Poem fractal

Goblin Market

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I think him clever, — but what is the use of cleverness in matters poetic?”

A memorable distinction between technical cleverness and genuine poetic value · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 18 February 1892

More remarks (60)

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.3966 + 0.4445i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · −0.4087 + 0.4371i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.3970 + 0.4462i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.3716 + 0.4442i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. Maxwell Bodenheim · −0.3625 + 0.4439i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content