Poem fractal

The Woman at the Well

by Joseph Campbell

15 July 1879 to 6 June 1944 (~65)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“To hear these children speak Irish the way they do makes one feel that the language of Niall Naoi Giallach is not dead yet, and has, indeed, no signs of dying.”

Finding hope for cultural continuity in the living speech of children · Mearing Stones, Teelin, Bunglass, and Slieve League

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. Amy Lowell · −0.2508 − 0.6417i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Elizabeth Prentiss · −0.2383 − 0.6449i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. Emily Dickinson · −0.2287 − 0.6348i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  4. Emily Dickinson · −0.2297 − 0.6215i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
  5. Matthew Arnold · −0.2394 − 0.6112i · 0.024 away · Compare side by side
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