Poem fractal

Virtue and Vice

by James Thomson

23 November 1834 to 3 June 1882 (~48)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“If any thing I can scribble be entertaining to you, may I be damned to transcribe dull books for the press all my life if I do not write abundantly.”

A playful early vow of literary productivity for the sake of friendship · Letter to Dr William Cranstoun, 11 December 1720

More remarks (6)

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. Anne Brontë · −0.0251 + 0.2393i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. John Keats · −0.0061 + 0.2493i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0152 + 0.2356i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  4. James Nack · −0.0037 + 0.2280i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  5. Alfred Austin · −0.0598 + 0.2466i · 0.037 away · Compare side by side
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