Poem fractal

On and On

by Mathilde Blind

21 March 1841 to 26 November 1896 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Her thoughts, instead of being naturally winged with melody, seem mechanically welded into song.”

Contrasting organic musical inspiration with verse that feels technically constructed · Biography, George Eliot (1883)

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. Arthur Symons · 0.0928 − 0.6854i · 0.023 away · Compare side by side
  2. Douglas Hyde · 0.1096 − 0.7274i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  3. Anne Bradstreet · 0.0916 − 0.7217i · 0.026 away · Compare side by side
  4. A. Mary F. Robinson · 0.1377 − 0.7005i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Ralph Waldo Emerson · 0.0929 − 0.6735i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
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