Poem fractal

In My Cot, Tho' Small's My Store

by Amelia Alderson Opie

12 November 1769 to 2 December 1853 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am not unhappy, on the contrary, I enjoy everything; and if my head be not turned by the large draughts which my vanity is daily quaffing, I shall return to Norwich much happier than I left it.”

Self-mocking delight in society and the pleasures of being admired · Letter to Mrs Taylor, 1797

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. Ben Jonson · 0.2319 + 0.0953i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.2719 + 0.1250i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  3. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · 0.2906 + 0.1210i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.1997 + 0.0912i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  5. Sam Walter Foss · 0.2705 + 0.1443i · 0.050 away · Compare side by side
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