Poem fractal

Symptoms of Disease of the Heart

by James Clarence Mangan

1 May 1803 to 20 June 1849 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Revenge of personal wrongs is a mean passion. It is the gratification of self-love in one of its most abominable forms.”

Condemning vengeance as wounded pride seeking ignoble satisfaction · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 18

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. John Gay · −0.0087 + 0.6511i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Johnson Cory · 0.0148 + 0.6396i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  3. Alfred Austin · −0.0377 + 0.6378i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.0380 + 0.6282i · 0.033 away · Compare side by side
  5. William Wordsworth · −0.0327 + 0.6158i · 0.034 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content