Poem fractal

The Enchanted Sheep-Fold

by Josephine Preston Peabody

30 May 1874 to 4 December 1922 (~48)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Oh, why was I born with a thousand wings of the spirit and a ball and chain on every hand and foot of me?”

Expressing the tension between boundless spiritual aspiration and physical constraint · Diary

More remarks (1)

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. Thomas Moore · 0.1080 − 0.6285i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Mina Loy · 0.1045 − 0.6466i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  3. Arthur Symons · 0.0995 − 0.6430i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charles Lamb · 0.1396 − 0.6101i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Herrick · 0.1193 − 0.6643i · 0.030 away · Compare side by side
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