Poem fractal

Stanzas of Sorrow

by Amelia Alderson Opie

12 November 1769 to 2 December 1853 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“How much were they to me in my darkest hours; how true and tender their sympathy! never to be forgotten. How can I help feeling for them who felt so much for me?”

Gratitude for friendship becoming a reason to extend compassion in return · Journal, January 1827

More remarks (40)

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 Hood · −0.6427 − 0.4626i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edmund Waller · −0.6313 − 0.4613i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  3. Bliss Carman · −0.6272 − 0.4723i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Charlotte Brontë · −0.6622 − 0.5030i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Makepeace Thackeray · −0.6264 − 0.4600i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
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