Poem fractal

In an Araba

by Violet Fane

24 February 1843 to 13 October 1905 (~62)

Browse poets 678

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. Thomas Hardy · −0.0865 − 0.2732i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  2. A. A. Milne · −0.1058 − 0.2813i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  3. Stephen Vincent Benét · −0.1118 − 0.2765i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
  4. Henry David Thoreau · −0.0972 − 0.2455i · 0.022 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Keats · −0.0607 − 0.2790i · 0.040 away · Compare side by side
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