Poem fractal

The Wild Honey Suckle

by Philip Freneau

2 January 1752 to 18 December 1832 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“This is the last time I shall enter into such a business; it worries me to death and by no means suits my giddy, wandring brain.”

Rejecting the constraints of schoolteaching in favour of freer pursuits · Letter to James Madison, 1772

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. Arthur Hugh Clough · 0.0305 − 0.4015i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · 0.0147 − 0.3876i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · 0.0488 − 0.3655i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Burns · 0.0634 − 0.3954i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Charles Wolfe · 0.0034 − 0.3849i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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