Poem fractal

How Do I Love Thee?

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6 March 1806 to 29 June 1861 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I do not pretend to any extraordinary meekness under criticism and it is possible enough that I might not be altogether obedient to yours.”

A candid acknowledgement that serious criticism need not require passive acceptance · Letter to Robert Browning, 11 January 1845

More remarks (13)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.2896 + 0.7394i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Butler Yeats · 0.3685 + 0.7201i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Dunbar · 0.2945 + 0.6921i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · 0.2946 + 0.6783i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  5. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.3643 + 0.6683i · 0.072 away · Compare side by side
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