Poem fractal

A Chill

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“They are very superior to my preconceived notions of them, and indicate talent and feeling: if such poetry may be trusted for telling a true tale.”

A shrewd caution against assuming that poetry is straightforward autobiography · Letter to William Michael Rossetti, 28 July 1851

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. Christina Rossetti · −0.5992 − 1.1334i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  2. Violet Jacob · −0.6199 − 1.1131i · 0.047 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Joyce · −0.5898 − 1.1438i · 0.051 away · Compare side by side
  4. Mark Twain · −0.5829 − 1.1558i · 0.061 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.5576 − 1.0338i · 0.064 away · Compare side by side
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