Poem fractal

Death

by Sir Thomas More

7 February 1478 to 6 July 1535 (~57)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith, I long not to live.”

Declaration of harmless intent and readiness to accept death if innocence is insufficient · Letter to Margaret Roper, account of interrogation

More remarks (13)

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. E. Nesbit · 0.6992 + 0.1246i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  2. Arthur Rimbaud · 0.6270 + 0.0667i · 0.048 away · Compare side by side
  3. Robert Jones · 0.6921 + 0.0554i · 0.053 away · Compare side by side
  4. Edwin Arlington Robinson · 0.7117 + 0.1207i · 0.054 away · Compare side by side
  5. Conrad Aiken · 0.6052 + 0.0739i · 0.062 away · Compare side by side
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