Poem fractal

Dream-Land

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“This has justly worried me, as the inaccuracy told in my own favour.”

What troubles Rossetti is not merely an error but an error that flatters her · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 26 March 1890

More remarks (60)

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. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.5841 − 0.8031i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  2. A.E.Housman · −0.5795 − 0.8031i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.5797 − 0.8268i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.6050 − 0.7642i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Arthur Larkin · −0.5761 − 0.8336i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
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