Poem fractal

The Moth

by Walter de la Mare

25 April 1873 to 22 June 1956 (~83)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Only the rarest kind of best is good enough for the young.”

A conviction that children deserve writing of the highest quality and seriousness. · Essay, On the Art of Writing

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. William Watson · −0.5175 − 0.8446i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  2. Mina Loy · −0.5605 − 0.9194i · 0.043 away · Compare side by side
  3. Thomas Hardy · −0.5008 − 0.8589i · 0.045 away · Compare side by side
  4. Sara Teasdale · −0.4992 − 0.9035i · 0.046 away · Compare side by side
  5. Joseph Campbell · −0.4983 − 0.8457i · 0.055 away · Compare side by side
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