Poem fractal

Punctuality

by Lewis Carroll

27 January 1832 to 14 January 1898 (~66)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

A comically direct formulation of order and completeness · Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, dialogue

More remarks (4)

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. William Browne, of Tavistock · 0.1233 − 0.8168i · 0.003 away · Compare side by side
  2. James Joyce · 0.1279 − 0.8285i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.1109 − 0.8284i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  4. Herman Melville · 0.1036 − 0.8310i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · 0.0976 − 0.8192i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
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