Poem fractal

Wife to Husband

by Ford Madox Hueffer

17 December 1873 to 26 June 1939 (~66)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The knowledge of the art of novel writing is open to every one who takes the trouble to like one book better than another and the literary tastes of men are fairly identical the world over and throughout time.”

Literary judgement begins with attentive reading rather than specialised authority · The English Novel

More remarks (36)

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. Hart Crane · 0.1545 − 0.0627i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  2. Claude McKay · 0.1871 − 0.1123i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Keats · 0.1798 − 0.0644i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Hoccleve · 0.1101 − 0.0913i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  5. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan · 0.1869 − 0.1301i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
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