Poem fractal

On first looking into Chapman's Homer

by John Keats

31 October 1795 to 23 February 1821 (~26)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children.”

Finding companionship and family in the natural world · Letter, 1818

More remarks (69)

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. John Donne · 0.0000 + 0.5051i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar Lee Masters · 0.0009 + 0.5232i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur O'Shaughnessy · −0.0245 + 0.4904i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Banjo Paterson · −0.0342 + 0.5328i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Phineas Fletcher · −0.0422 + 0.5021i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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