Poem fractal

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

23 August 1849 to 11 July 1903 (~54)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I love to remember that I came into the world contemporaneously with some of his bravest work, and to reflect that even as he was the inspiration of my boyhood so is he a delight of my middle age.”

Reflecting on how a beloved writer can accompany a reader through life · Essay, Dickens

More remarks (51)

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. Elinor Wylie · −0.3187 − 0.6554i · 0.001 away · Compare side by side
  2. Ralph Waldo Emerson · −0.3246 − 0.6545i · 0.005 away · Compare side by side
  3. James Joyce · −0.3273 − 0.6488i · 0.010 away · Compare side by side
  4. Hart Crane · −0.3283 − 0.6649i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  5. John Greenleaf Whittier · −0.3046 − 0.6530i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
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