Poem fractal

The Dead Lover

by James Whitcomb Riley

7 October 1849 to 22 July 1916 (~67)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The best of all things is to be natural.”

The attribution is widespread but a definitive primary source is unclear · Prose remark, commonly attributed

More remarks (18)

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. John McCrae · −0.5007 − 0.4896i · 0.008 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.5065 − 0.4942i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Makepeace Thackeray · −0.5057 − 0.5016i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. David Melvill · −0.4782 − 0.5080i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  5. Joanna Baillie · −0.5224 − 0.4946i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content