Poem fractal

Her Voice

by Oscar Wilde

16 October 1854 to 30 November 1900 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”

Complaining that intelligence has become commonplace · Play, The Importance of Being Earnest

More remarks (97)

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. William Wordsworth · −0.1169 − 0.3534i · 0.002 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.1121 − 0.3883i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Wordsworth · −0.0921 − 0.3808i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
  4. John Clare · −0.0843 − 0.3733i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Schwenck Gilbert · −0.1277 − 0.3906i · 0.038 away · Compare side by side
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