Poem fractal

Caged Skylark

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

28 July 1844 to 8 June 1889 (~45)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“What you look hard at seems to look hard at you, whether you look at a thing or a person.”

Reflecting on the intense, reciprocal attention involved in observing the world · Journal

More remarks (4)

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. T. E. Brown · −0.4869 + 0.3735i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edwin Markham · −0.4999 + 0.3805i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Richard · −0.4897 + 0.3345i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.4900 + 0.3328i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Thomas Jordan · −0.5063 + 0.3911i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
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