Poem fractal

Song of the Red Republican

by Gerald Massey

29 May 1828 to 29 October 1907 (~79)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Above all, Poverty is a cold place to write Poetry in. It is not attractive to poetical influences. The Muses do not like entertainment which is not fit for man or beast.”

Rejecting the romantic notion that hardship necessarily nourishes art · Preface to the third edition of Babe Christabel (1854)

More remarks (3)

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. Nora Hopper Chesson · −0.2308 + 0.6979i · 0.009 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edna St. Vincent Millay · −0.2261 + 0.7035i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  3. Edgar Lee Masters · −0.2221 + 0.6867i · 0.021 away · Compare side by side
  4. Lord Byron · −0.2568 + 0.7210i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
  5. Dylan Thomas · −0.2441 + 0.6687i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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