Poem fractal

The West Country

by Alice Cary

26 April 1820 to 12 February 1871 (~51)

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. Edward Thomas · −0.1358 − 0.5556i · 0.004 away · Compare side by side
  2. Martin Peerson · −0.1265 − 0.5533i · 0.012 away · Compare side by side
  3. Mary Lamb · −0.1343 − 0.5458i · 0.014 away · Compare side by side
  4. Gerard Manley Hopkins · −0.1326 − 0.5742i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  5. Philip Arthur Larkin · −0.1351 − 0.5433i · 0.016 away · Compare side by side
—
—
0:00
0:00
Track 1
Skip to main content