Poem fractal

Music when Soft Voices Die

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 to 8 July 1822 (~30)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The language of poets is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension.”

Describing metaphor as a means of discovering relationships that ordinary language overlooks. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

More remarks (44)

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. W. H. Davies · −0.0215 − 0.6040i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. Alan Seeger · −0.0392 − 0.6120i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Moore · −0.0448 − 0.6139i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. Andrew Marvell · −0.0496 − 0.6146i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dorothy Greenwell · −0.0065 − 0.6336i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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