Poem fractal

The Other Side of a Mirror

by Mary Coleridge

23 September 1861 to 25 August 1907 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“We give more truth to those we hate than to those we love.”

Suggesting that affection can make us conceal parts of ourselves · Gathered Leaves, letters and diaries, 1888

More remarks (39)

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. Emily Brontë · 0.0411 − 0.4884i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Joshua Henry Jones · 0.0476 − 0.4800i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anne Whitney · 0.0487 − 0.5163i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. Anna Lætitia Barbauld · 0.0324 − 0.5169i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · 0.0382 − 0.5216i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
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