Poem fractal

If This Be All

by Anne Brontë

17 January 1820 to 28 May 1849 (~29)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find.”

Suggesting that even difficult narratives can contain moral or practical insight · Preface to Agnes Grey

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 Blake · −0.3098 − 0.8251i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Sara Teasdale · −0.2836 − 0.7957i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Bartlet · −0.2903 − 0.8346i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar A. Guest · −0.2706 − 0.8104i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · −0.3101 − 0.7918i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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