Poem fractal

Red May

by A. Mary F. Robinson

27 February 1857 to 9 February 1944 (~87)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The chapel of the Minor Poet may be too small to admit the crowd; it may be thronged when three or four are gathered together. None the less, it has its use and place.”

Celebrating the intimate bond between lesser-known poets and their devoted readers · Preface to her Collected Poems (1902)

More remarks (8)

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 · 0.4593 − 0.3100i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.4249 − 0.3404i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  3. Nora Hopper Chesson · 0.4660 − 0.3632i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Austin · 0.4311 − 0.2965i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  5. A. A. Milne · 0.4945 − 0.3015i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
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