Poem fractal

The Miller of the Dee

by Charles Mackay

27 March 1814 to 24 December 1889 (~75)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Every age has its peculiar folly—some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on either by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the mere force of imitation.”

Observing how profit, excitement, and imitation drive mass behaviour · Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, preface

More remarks (4)

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. Robert Nichols · −0.2166 − 0.3505i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Paul Laurence Dunbar · −0.2060 − 0.3484i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Stephens · −0.2100 − 0.3384i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  4. George Herbert · −0.2070 − 0.3393i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  5. Arthur Hugh Clough · −0.2022 − 0.3428i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
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