Poem fractal

The Famine

by James Clarence Mangan

1 May 1803 to 20 June 1849 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“It is the way of the world. Most of us prefer the dissimulation that flatters us to the sincerity that wounds.”

Observing that comforting pretence often defeats painful honesty · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 21

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. James Graham · −0.1919 + 0.2123i · 0.002 away · Compare side by side
  2. William Blake · −0.1851 + 0.2125i · 0.006 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Browning · −0.1999 + 0.2168i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edgar Allan Poe · −0.2006 + 0.2157i · 0.011 away · Compare side by side
  5. Laurence Binyon · −0.1954 + 0.1984i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
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