Poem fractal

General Prologue - Opening

by Geoffrey Chaucer

c. 1343 to 25 October 1400 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Now wol I preie mekely every discret persone that redith or herith this litel tretys, to have my rude enditing for excused.”

A modest appeal for charitable judgement of an imperfect work · Treatise on the Astrolabe, prologue

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. John Keats · −0.3506 + 0.7862i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  2. Bernard Barton · −0.3624 + 0.7574i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  3. D. H. Lawrence · −0.3355 + 0.7997i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lydia Huntley Sigourney · −0.3319 + 0.8013i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. Joseph Blanco White · −0.3684 + 0.7413i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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