Poem fractal

A Complaint

by William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 to 23 April 1850 (~80)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The mind often does not think, when it thinks that it is thinking.”

Distinguishing genuine concentration from the appearance of thought · Conversation, recorded by Christopher Wordsworth

More remarks (44)

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. Eugene Field · −0.0262 − 0.5655i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Raymond Garfield Dandridge · −0.0392 − 0.5420i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Cecil Frances Alexander · −0.0381 − 0.5686i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  4. Francis James Child · −0.0333 − 0.5336i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  5. Lord Byron · −0.0052 − 0.5382i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
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