Poem fractal

The Sea and the Skylark

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

28 July 1844 to 8 June 1889 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring.”

A brief expression of wonder at the renewing beauty of the natural world · Journal

More remarks (4)

Drawing the boundary…

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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. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.7473 + 0.2006i · 0.067 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lydia Huntley Sigourney · −0.8229 + 0.3252i · 0.084 away · Compare side by side
  3. William Soutar · −0.7259 + 0.1748i · 0.101 away · Compare side by side
  4. Amelia Alderson Opie · −0.7990 + 0.3490i · 0.105 away · Compare side by side
  5. Emily Dickinson · −0.6937 + 0.2337i · 0.105 away · Compare side by side
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