Poem fractal

Romance sonámbulo

by Federico García Lorca

5 June 1898 to 19 August 1936 (~38)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.”

Describing artistic inspiration as something bodily and instinctive · Lecture, Theory and Play of the Duende

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. John Wesley Holloway · 0.9506 − 0.4130i · 0.044 away · Compare side by side
  2. S.E.K. Mqhayi · 0.8950 − 0.4155i · 0.094 away · Compare side by side
  3. Francesco Petrarca · 0.8778 − 0.3666i · 0.106 away · Compare side by side
  4. Robert Burns · 0.8779 − 0.4022i · 0.107 away · Compare side by side
  5. Antonio Machado · 0.9548 − 0.4924i · 0.113 away · Compare side by side
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