Poem fractal

The World

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am somewhat in a quake, a fresh volume being a formidable upset of nerves,—but at any rate, it cannot turn out twins!”

A new book becomes a comic equivalent of childbirth in this self-deprecating remark · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 28 April 1881

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 · −0.1478 + 0.6730i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Claude McKay · −0.1616 + 0.6573i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Clare · −0.1389 + 0.6541i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  4. Alfred Austin · −0.1469 + 0.6486i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. Christina Rossetti · −0.1448 + 0.6489i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
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