Poem fractal

The Poor Ghost

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am truly sorry for my ebullition of temper this morning (and for a hundred other faults).”

A disarming instance of Rossetti's severe self-scrutiny · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 5 November 1873

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. Stéphane Mallarmé · 0.5480 − 0.1355i · 0.039 away · Compare side by side
  2. Robert Cunninghame-Graham · 0.5328 − 0.2066i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  3. Douglas Malloch · 0.4865 − 0.1343i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · 0.4794 − 0.1364i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
  5. Lady Grizel Baillie · 0.4829 − 0.1229i · 0.057 away · Compare side by side
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