Poem fractal

Self-Interrogation

by Emily Brontë

30 July 1818 to 19 December 1848 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A cat is an animal who has more human feelings than almost any other being.”

Recognising a close emotional kinship between animals and human beings · School essay, The Cat, 15 May 1842, translated from French

More remarks (11)

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. W. H. Davies · −0.1549 − 0.6194i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.1743 − 0.6146i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.1808 − 0.6158i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.1430 − 0.6353i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.1748 − 0.6445i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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