Poem fractal

Memento Mori

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

A traditional proverb sometimes attributed to Rossetti without a secure primary source · Conversation, commonly attributed

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. Yone Noguchi · 0.0112 − 1.1089i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  2. Algernon Charles Swinburne · 0.0014 − 1.0925i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Gibson Lockhart · −0.0161 − 1.0653i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · 0.0500 − 1.0584i · 0.058 away · Compare side by side
  5. Bernard Barton · 0.0312 − 1.0332i · 0.070 away · Compare side by side
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