Poem fractal

The Battle of Blenheim

by Robert Southey

12 August 1774 to 21 March 1843 (~69)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“In these days nothing can be kept from the joint demands of cupidity and curiosity.”

A sharp observation on the forces that turn private lives into public material · Letter to Joseph Cottle, 30 September 1836

More remarks (35)

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. Arthur Macy · −0.2546 − 0.5668i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2421 − 0.5583i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Lady Nairne · −0.2582 − 0.5464i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mary Coleridge · −0.2587 − 0.5461i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Moore · −0.2668 − 0.5453i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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