Poem fractal

The Voice of Him I Love

by Amelia Alderson Opie

12 November 1769 to 2 December 1853 (~84)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Rocks and sea do not lose, but gain, in beauty and sublimity, from rough weather.”

Finding heightened beauty in nature when it becomes wild and turbulent · Letter to Sarah Rose, 26 November 1832

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. Emily Dickinson · 0.3692 − 0.6155i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edgar Allan Poe · 0.3384 − 0.5817i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Burns · 0.3690 − 0.5820i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Lodge · 0.3846 − 0.5995i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. Sara Teasdale · 0.3166 − 0.6189i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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