Poem fractal

The Song of Wandering Aengus

by William Butler Yeats

13 June 1865 to 28 January 1939 (~74)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“All that is personal soon rots; it must be packed in ice or salt.”

Arguing that personal experience must be transformed by artistic form if it is to endure · Essay, A General Introduction for My Work

More remarks (81)

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. Bayard Taylor · −0.4124 − 0.3214i · 0.015 away · Compare side by side
  2. Edward Shanks · −0.4408 − 0.3103i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  3. John Stuart Blackie · −0.4130 − 0.3337i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  4. Thomas Campbell · −0.4093 − 0.3183i · 0.018 away · Compare side by side
  5. A. A. Milne · −0.4337 − 0.3037i · 0.020 away · Compare side by side
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