Poem fractal

Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher

by Walter Savage Landor

30 January 1775 to 17 September 1864 (~89)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I returned this moment from Clifton - hungry enough - but I shall hurry over.”

Eagerness despite hunger · Letter to Leigh Hunt, 1845

More remarks (112)

Drawing the boundary…

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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. George Sterling · 0.3105 − 0.0338i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. James Beattie · 0.3019 − 0.0365i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Lee Masters · 0.3347 − 0.0230i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edward Herbert · 0.2707 − 0.0285i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Shakespeare · 0.3409 − 0.0319i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
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