Poem fractal

A Prodigal Son

by Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 to 29 December 1894 (~64)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It has become a different world since last I wrote to you.”

Written after her mother's death, the sentence captures bereavement as a transformation of the whole world · Letter to Lucy Rossetti, 19 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. George Crabbe · −0.3939 − 0.2677i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  2. W. H. Davies · −0.4017 − 0.2783i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · −0.3797 − 0.2830i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Cale Young Rice · −0.4044 − 0.2714i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Lisle Bowles · −0.3729 − 0.2759i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
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