Poem fractal

The Love-Adieu

by James Clarence Mangan

1 May 1803 to 20 June 1849 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“What the will helps to fabricate the will can help to destroy.”

Asserting that consciously made mental forms remain subject to choice · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 20

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 · 0.4397 − 0.6645i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Lewis Carroll · 0.4408 − 0.6427i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Matthew Prior · 0.4136 − 0.7093i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  4. Ella Wheeler Wilcox · 0.4110 − 0.7124i · 0.049 away · Compare side by side
  5. James Joyce · 0.4211 − 0.7206i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
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