Poem fractal

Yr Afon

by Watcyn Wyn

7 March 1844 to 19 November 1905 (~61)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“There is something very beautiful in this cutting and covenant: first the commandments into tablets, then the laws into your palm, and finally the covenant deep into your heart.”

Original: Y mae rhywbeth yn brydferth iawn yn y torri a'r cymodi yma. Torri'r gorchmynion ar lechau i ddechreu, torri'r deddfau ar dor dy law yn nês ymlaen; torri'r cytundeb i ddyfnder dy galon yn y diwedd. — Tracing moral commitment from outward inscription towards inward conviction · Sermon, Cyfamod Duw a Dyn (Welsh)

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. Watcyn Wyn · 0.3498 − 0.7299i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Amelia Alderson Opie · 0.3364 − 0.7660i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  3. Richard · 0.3634 − 0.6980i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · 0.3205 − 0.6982i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  5. T. S. Eliot · 0.3670 − 0.6817i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
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