Poem fractal

Mad Song

by Amelia Alderson Opie

12 November 1769 to 2 December 1853 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have had pleasing and gratifying things to relate; but, alas! he, to whom the relation would have given such pleasure, is gone; and even on the instant my pleasure has been swallowed up in pain.”

Capturing how bereavement can suddenly transform pleasure into grief · Letter, 29 June 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. Philip Bourke Marston · −0.0667 + 0.3821i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Orlando Gibbons · −0.0756 + 0.3895i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Algernon Charles Swinburne · −0.0839 + 0.3568i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lord Byron · −0.0945 + 0.3691i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Richard · −0.0426 + 0.3511i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
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