Poem fractal

The Two Lions

by A. Mary F. Robinson

27 February 1857 to 9 February 1944 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Each of us also has some private niche, some inconsiderable intimate shrine, for the poet no one praises, who is all the more our own.”

Celebrating the private affection readers form for poets overlooked by wider fame · Preface to her Collected Poems (1902)

More remarks (8)

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 · 0.3390 − 0.8515i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Oscar Wilde · 0.3174 − 0.8374i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Sheffield · 0.3328 − 0.8152i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · 0.3086 − 0.8305i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Burns · 0.3109 − 0.8198i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
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