Poem fractal

Dark Rosaleen

by James Clarence Mangan

1 May 1803 to 20 June 1849 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“None but exalted spirits, who can calmly look down upon human events and human frailties as from an eminence, are capable of unalterable friendship.”

Linking enduring friendship with patience and breadth of spirit · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 27

More remarks (39)

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. Richard · 0.3842 − 0.1641i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur Symons · 0.3972 − 0.1889i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Parnell · 0.3722 − 0.1925i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  4. William Wordsworth · 0.3707 − 0.1365i · 0.041 away · Compare side by side
  5. Rose Milligan · 0.4052 − 0.2101i · 0.042 away · Compare side by side
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