Poem fractal

Love is a Terrible Thing

by Grace Fallow Norton

29 October 1876 to 1926 (~50)

Browse poets 678

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 Barnes · 0.0328 − 0.3462i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Richard · 0.0356 − 0.3454i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Dylan Thomas · 0.0348 − 0.3234i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · 0.0248 − 0.3052i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christopher Smart · 0.0470 − 0.3199i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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