Poem fractal

The King's Ring

by Theodore Tilton

2 October 1835 to 29 May 1907 (~72)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Mrs. Stowe, by Uncle Tom, helped the American Slave more than any one human being ever did before.”

Crediting fiction with a moral force no sermon had matched in the fight against slavery · Letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, about 1861

More remarks (4)

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. Lucian B. Watkins · −0.2690 − 0.5056i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Sir Henry Wotton · −0.2711 − 0.5207i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Joyce · −0.2517 − 0.5087i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  4. W. H. Davies · −0.2497 − 0.5163i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  5. Madison Julius Cawein · −0.2452 − 0.5079i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
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