Poem fractal

Victory

by Sir Lewis Morris

23 January 1833 to 12 November 1907 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is absurd to suppose that there can ever be any lack of subjects, so long as man has a history, so long as there are passions - love and hate, and greed and lust, and jealousy - in the world.”

Finding enduring poetic material in history and human passion · Essay, Some Thoughts on Modern Poetry (1891)

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. Richard · −0.0937 − 0.5078i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Burns · −0.1149 − 0.4846i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Blake · −0.0973 − 0.5143i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  4. Stephen Vincent Benét · −0.1064 − 0.5175i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Gray · −0.1243 − 0.5061i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
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