Poem fractal

The Dead

by Mathilde Blind

21 March 1841 to 26 November 1896 (~55)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“But an aphorism, however brilliant, usually contains only one half the truth.”

A warning that even brilliant maxims usually capture only part of reality · 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. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.3088 + 0.2894i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.2950 + 0.2735i · 0.019 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.3271 + 0.3087i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  4. Rupert Brooke · −0.3279 + 0.2669i · 0.032 away · Compare side by side
  5. Hart Crane · −0.3268 + 0.3169i · 0.035 away · Compare side by side
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