Poem fractal

The Widow

by A. Mary F. Robinson

27 February 1857 to 9 February 1944 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“But if I see the necessary grace that they possess, how clearly, alas! do I perceive the magnificent qualities they lack!”

Balancing confidence in her work with an unsparing awareness of its limitations · 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. Thomas Moore · −0.3111 − 0.0813i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · −0.3096 − 0.1162i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3171 − 0.1122i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.3133 − 0.0766i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. W. H. Davies · −0.3114 − 0.0750i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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