Poem fractal

He and She

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Please do not fancy me bearing this bitter trial so much better than I really am bearing it.”

Rossetti resists any sentimental picture of effortless spiritual endurance · Letter to Lucy Rossetti, 21 April 1886

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. John Banister Tabb · 0.3783 − 0.9008i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  2. Hilda Doolittle · 0.3479 − 0.9545i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · 0.3477 − 0.9772i · 0.064 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 0.3959 − 0.8523i · 0.070 away · Compare side by side
  5. Wallace Stevens · 0.3042 − 0.9285i · 0.072 away · Compare side by side
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