Poem fractal

The Ways of Cupid

by James Clarence Mangan

1 May 1803 to 20 June 1849 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I have always a much better recollection of the emotions that were excited in my mind by hearing a certain air or perusing a particular story than I have of the music or the volume itself.”

Recognising that emotional impressions often outlast their artistic causes · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 26

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. Percy Bysshe Shelley · −0.0726 − 0.4252i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Thomas Stanley · −0.0836 − 0.4080i · 0.017 away · Compare side by side
  3. W. H. Davies · −0.0595 − 0.3853i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Matthew Arnold · −0.0498 − 0.3850i · 0.031 away · Compare side by side
  5. Robert Frost · −0.0570 − 0.4457i · 0.036 away · Compare side by side
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