Poem fractal

The Woodspurge

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

12 May 1828 to 9 April 1882 (~54)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The only thing that justifies the existence of a work of art is that it should be beautiful.”

Treating beauty as art’s essential justification · Prose statement, commonly attributed to Rossetti

More remarks (4)

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 · −0.0602 − 0.5148i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  2. Emily Brontë · −0.0617 − 0.5170i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Habington · −0.0574 − 0.5253i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. A. Milne · −0.0753 − 0.5175i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
  5. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.0760 − 0.5087i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
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