Poem fractal

Consider

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I don't think harm will accrue from my S.P.C.K. books, even to my standing: if it did, I should still be glad to throw my grain of dust into the religious scale.”

Religious purpose mattered to her more than literary standing · Letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1 January 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. Robert Herrick · −0.0330 − 0.7339i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. Christina Rossetti · −0.0548 − 0.7357i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Stanley · −0.0296 − 0.7050i · 0.025 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Hood · −0.0405 − 0.7550i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Davidson · −0.0558 − 0.7069i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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